


thy people will be my people

by Kansas42



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: AU, Alliance Rune, Angst and Humor, BAMF everyone, Bisexual Jace Wayland, Bittersweet Ending, Canonical Character Death, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Dynamics, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands, Immortality Angst, M/M, POV Multiple, Pack Dynamics, Parabatai Feels, Permanent Side Effects, Post-Season/Series Finale, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-06-02 05:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19434991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kansas42/pseuds/Kansas42
Summary: It’s a humbling realization to discovery that Clary, of all people, has a more reasonable and well-thought out strategy to rescue Magnus, one that doesn’t involve anyone being semi-permanently murdered. The alliance rune is clever, nearly guaranteed to work, and best of all, temporary.Well, Alec tries to tell himself later.Two out of three isn’t so bad.(In which the alliance rune is unexpectedly permanent, and everyone deals with the fallout.)





	1. we can be a mistake, a fiasco

**Author's Note:**

> There were many aspects of the Shadowhunters finale I loved—MALEC WEDDING, Y’ALL—but boy, I’d have given my left arm to see that alliance rune become permanent. Which, hey, that’s what fanfic is for. So I figured, might as well add Maia and Luke to the Edom expedition, because I was bummed those two got sidelined. And then I was like, well, if I’m already making THOSE changes, I might as well switch up a few pairings and really, truly bend the alliance rune to my will.
> 
> Things just sort of snowballed from there.
> 
> Check out the end notes if you’d like a summary of the AU switch-ups before you read!

It turns out that the descent into Hell is easy _unless_ you’re Nephilim and trying to save your fiancée from a dimension that will literally burn you alive.

Alec admits that getting Simon to murder him, bury him, and turn him is probably not the best plan to save Magnus from Edom for multiple reasons. Drinking blood sounds . . . well, disgusting. He’ll be able to survive Edom, but no more capable of escaping it. He’s doesn’t really know who he is, if not a Shadowhunter. And there’s a more than decent chance that the transformation won’t take, that his plan will just straight-up kill him. Dying for Magnus isn’t ideal, but it’s certainly a waste of time if it doesn’t even _work_.

It’s a humbling realization, to discovery that Clary, of all people, has a more reasonable and well-thought out strategy to rescue Magnus, one that doesn’t involve anyone being semi-permanently murdered. The alliance rune is clever, nearly guaranteed to work, and best of all, temporary.

_Well_ , Alec tries to tell himself later. _Two out of three isn’t so bad_.

#

Luke can’t tell if he’s taking the news better or worse than the others.

The “Allied 10.” That’s what they’re being called, at least by those who aren’t calling them subhuman or abominations or traitors—the same racist crap he’s been hearing, in some version or another, his whole life. His transition from Shadowhunter to werewolf hadn’t been easy; some days, it’d been hard to keep going at all, but ultimately, he’d survived it and become a better man in the process. He became a detective, a father, an alpha—

And lost his pack, his badge, and his daughter, just like that. Clary was the only one he got back.

Clary was the only one he couldn’t afford to lose.

He wasn’t prepared for heavenly fire. He’d long since given up any hope of becoming a Shadowhunter again, thought he’d finally settled into the kind of Downworlder he was meant to be—before the injection burned the lycanthropy straight from his veins. For one day, and one day only, he was pure Nephilim.

Now—

“Here you go,” Simon says cheerfully, serving him a plate of raw, bloody steak and an empty juice glass.

Luke laughs, despite himself. “Didn’t we decide a wine glass would be better?”

“Yeah, I don’t actually have wine glasses? Anyway, you don’t really have to drink that. Here.” Simon hands him a Star Trek mug full of warm, red blood. The cup says HE’S DEAD, JIM! in big, black letters.

Luke takes a settling breath, then drinks. It, well. It tastes like blood. 

He’s done worse things to survive. 

Simon crosses his arms, bounces back and forth a little. “What do you think?”

Luke takes another sip. “Liked the one yesterday more.”

“So, you’re an AB man. Good to know.” Simon settles across from him on the couch. “How’s the vamping out going?”

“Not bad, actually.” Luke isn’t having the same control problems that Simon had when he first became a vampire, or, for that matter, the problems he himself had when he became a werewolf. Could be he just knows how to handle himself now. It could also be the alliance rune itself: it interacts differently, inconsistently, with each of the Allied 10. Some have lost more than they’ve gained.

Luke, for the most part, is lucky. Each of his runes still work. He still has the sun. He can take the Lord’s name in vain all he wants. Hell, even his beard has finished growing back. Mostly, he’s just a Shadowhunter, only now he can run absurdly fast, and he’ll starve to death if he doesn’t drink blood on a regular basis. No super-strength, though; he still has to rely on runes and his own, not inconsiderable physique for that. And while Simon has repeatedly tried to teach him how to encanto someone, Luke has failed every time. It’s probably for the best.

Luke is lucky, so he tries not to think about Maryse’s face when he told her the news.

He takes another sip to distract himself. “How about you? Missing that vamp speed?”

“Oh, man, you have no idea. I keep running late to _everything_ ; it’s a whole Barry Allen scenario. Izzy was Not Happy last week.” He grins toothily. Literally, Luke can see his fangs. “I made it up to her, though.”

Luke, smiling, puts up a hand to forestall any details: he doesn’t need to know exactly how Simon made it up to Izzy, or, for that matter, who Barry Allen is and what comic or sci-fi movie he undoubtedly comes from. His smile dims, though, as he notices the time. “You’re not the only one running late,” he says. “You hear from—"

Simon’s phone goes off. His face falls as he checks the messages. “Oh, Fray.”

Luke winces. “Stuck again, huh?”

“It’s weird, right? I didn’t even know this was a thing that happened to werewolves.”

“It’s not,” Luke says, and drains his mug. “But it’s a whole new world out there.”

#

The Jade Wolf hasn’t reopened yet, but the bloodstains have been removed, which means it’s a good enough place to study, as long as Maia can keep from closing her eyes and seeing vampires murder almost her entire pack. Sometimes, of course, that’s all Maia can see. But she keeps trying anyway because she refuses to let that memory be her only memory of this place, and she’s a Luke Cage, “always forward” kind of girl. Plus, it’s quiet. Normally.

A portal opens up in the middle of the restaurant. Alec steps through it, takes one look at Clary, and sighs deeply. “Again?”

Clary lowers her head to her paws, clearly more outraged than contrite.

Maia snorts. _Lessons on How to Be a Better Werewolf with Maia Roberts_ haven’t progressed as fast as either Maia or Clary would like, maybe because Maia isn’t as patient of a teacher as Luke, maybe because Clary has completely unrealistic expectations for how quickly anyone masters this stuff, or maybe just because Clary is an exceptionally anomalous werewolf and normal rules don’t apply to her. From what Maia understands, that’s actually pretty on brand for Clary.

She wolfs out easily and often, which is technically an improvement: the first two weeks, she transformed twice a day at least. Alec’s been forced to pull her from mission rotation until she can get her emotions in check, which isn’t making anyone happy, least of all Maia, who does have other things to do besides being Clary’s full-time werewolf tutor. Clary also isn’t quite as strong as a normal werewolf and obviously can’t access her runes when fully wolfed out. 

And sometimes, when she’s upset about something, Clary gets stuck in her wolf form—which, for ridiculous reasons, has red fur, the exact same color as her hair. Whenever this happens, Clary isn’t angry or aggressive, like Luke was when Maia and Simon found him in the woods after Jocelyn died. She’s just . . . stuck, unable to shift back for hours or days at a time. Maia has no idea what’s triggered that reaction today, and isn’t sure she wants to.

Clary’s grown on her, she has—she’s passionate and idealistic, and Maia can trust her to never bow to the Clave, no matter what—but her problems are A Lot. And Maia has her own problems now, more than a few.

On the upside, silver doesn’t hurt Clary at all, which, after Jordan, is a relief that hits Maia considerably harder than she expected. And Clary can’t turn anyone, either, a conclusion they’ve made after three separate incidents: one with a mundane at Starbucks, one with a jackass Shadowhunter who wanted to teach Clary a lesson for mixing with Downworlders, and one with Jace during, well. During.

Even when Jace could lie, keeping his mouth shut had always been a problem--as Maia well knows from her disastrous double date. Now that he can only tell the truth, well. She’s never seen anyone move as fast as Clary when she slapped a hand over Jace’s mouth.

“Where is Jace?” Maia asks, returning to her books. Trying to complete a degree she probably won’t even use might be ridiculous at this point; besides training Clary, Maia is still working on rebuilding the pack, which has become more difficult now that she’s . . . different. She’s stronger than ever, but her heightened senses have dimmed, and she smells like Nephilim, which many wolves find disconcerting. Clary, apparently, smells more like a wolf than Maia does, something that Maia is definitely not frustrated about, and if she is, well, no one’s around to see the claw marks on her bedroom door, anyway.

No, Maia can admit to herself that the degree is ridiculous. But resolution is important to her. Closure is important to her. She means to graduate, even if it takes her the better part of a decade to do it. Finish this chapter. Move to the next.

Alec squats down beside Clary. “He’s on mission with Meliorn, trying to convince the Seelie Queen that reforming our alliance is a necessary step, and that this—” he gestures vaguely between the three of them “—is an opportunity, not a fiasco.”

Maia raises an eyebrow. “Is that would you think? We’re a fiasco?”

Alec rubs his temples. His skin is too pale, the circles under his eyes too dark. She wonders when he last slept. “I think it could be an opportunity,” he says, “if the Clave and the Seelie Queen and every other Death Eater out there—”

Maia and Clary both lift their heads. “You know what a—”

“Izzy and Simon forced me to watch these movies, I don’t know, they didn’t make any sense.” Alec furrows those ridiculous eyebrows of his. “Why does anyone go back to that school? It’s terrible. There’s always a monster or an evil teacher on the loose, and the kids are expected to survive, even though no one will teach them any proper battle magic, fighting techniques, or useful combat strategies. That Defense Against the Dark Arts class is a joke. If Max was a wizard, I’d never let him go anywhere near Hogwarts. Shadowhunters might start young, but at least we _train_ our—what? Why are you smiling at me like that?”

“Because you’re the youngest curmudgeon I’ve ever met,” Maia says, outright grinning. “It’s kind of adorable.” 

Clary, agreeing, nips playfully at Alec’s ankle.

“Stop it,” Alec tells her, but immediately undermines himself by scratching Clary behind her ears. She seems to like it. If anyone did that to Maia, she’d bite their hand off.

“So, what? More pureblood Nephilim crap? I thought things were going better with the Clave.” Last Maia heard, they’d even conceded Alec’s Downworlder deputy initiative, although she’s still not sure exactly who those Downworlders are going to be, or what role they’ll ultimately play going forward.

Alec shakes his head, smiling tightly. “It’s two steps forward, one step back: every step of the way. I have some political clout—it helps I was Head of the Institute when Valentine and Lilith were dealt with—but I also have more enemies than I used to. My record will only get me so far, especially with Jonathan still . . .”

He winces and trails off, as Clary lowers her head to her paws again.

“Hard to say how it will play out,” Alec says, shrugging. “And if I get replaced—”

Maia pushes away her books. “You think that’ll happen?”

“I think the Clave would be more comfortable if the New York Institute wasn’t run by half a Shadowhunter.”

Clary nips at Alec’s ankle again, less playfully this time. 

He glares at her, eyes unhappy and jaw set. “You should be rubbing it in,” he says. “And denying the truth won’t change the facts. I _am_ —”

“Still a Shadowhunter,” Maia says, cutting him off. “And a great leader, a giant curmudgeon, and the best chance the Downworld’s got at peace, too. If another Victor Aldertree takes charge, everyone in the Shadow World will suffer. So, let’s fix this. What do we need to do to keep you on top? You need to lay low for a while? Cool off on the Downworld initiatives?”

Alec stares at her, then Clary. Clary sits up, more earnest than any wolf should be.

“No,” he says finally. “I wasted years playing it safe. Never got anywhere that way. Besides, I don’t want the Clave thinking I’ll roll over whenever they raise a hand. I’d rather lose my position doing the right thing than keep it by being their puppet.”

Maia knows exactly what he means.

“Damn,” she says, resting her chin on her hands.

He looks at her, frowning. “What?”

“Nothing. Just, that was inspiring.” She grins at him, even though she means every word. “Say it again, but this time, put your hand on your hips and look over there, heroically.”

Alec smiles, blushing. “Shut up,” he says, as Maia laughs, and Clary affectionately nudges Alec’s calf with her head.

#

Underhill greets Jace and Meliorn when they—finally—arrive back at the Institute. “How did it go?”

_Oh, fantastic_ , Jace thinks, barely resisting the urge to scrub his face with his hands.

“Oh, it was a disaster,” Jace says, because even obvious sarcasm counts as lying. He closes his eyes and breaths through his nose.

Meliorn smirks. “It was not a complete success,” he tells Underhill smoothly, “nor was it a complete failure.” Which isn’t a lie, exactly: after two days of various court politics, pointed insults, and annoying Seelie games, the Queen finally conceded to _consider_ allowing her subjects to sign up as Downworld deputies—though she insisted on calling them “temporary liaisons” and insinuated the Shadowhunters shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for volunteers. It was frankly more than Jace expected, and anyway, he didn’t get nearly sucked into the ground by a bunch of magical vines this time, so sure. It could’ve gone worse.

But Jace is never going to talk all . . . elegant and shit like Meliorn. There’s a reason Alec became the diplomat, even though he’s just as blunt as Jace and, somehow, an even worse liar: Alec still knows how to pause and choose his words carefully when he has to. He can step around the truth, even if he can’t act worth a damn. His smile might be so forced that you can actually see the murder in his eyes, but he can stick to the script if that’s what the job requires. He did it with Maryse and Robert for years, after all.

But Jace just doesn’t know how to come at things sidewise. He could always lie directly, but he could never evade. He can play a part, but he can’t _manipulate_.

The physical changes aren’t so bad. It’s weird that his ears are pointed now, but they aren’t hideous or anything. Clary seems to like them, anyway, so. Yeah. He doesn’t mind that part. Jace can sense ley lines, too, which could be useful in the future, and his seraph blade still lights up under his touch. He’s able to access all his runes, without his stele, even. Clary can’t make new runes anymore, and lost all the ones she created except her sunlight rune, but Jace hasn’t lost anything, anything but the ability to control what comes out of his own mouth.

He’s more bitter about it than he probably has any right to be.

Meliorn’s still smirking, and Underhill isn’t nearly as good at hiding that smile as he thinks. _Well_ , Jace thinks sourly, _at least I’m making someone happy_. “We should check in,” he says instead. “Where’s Alec?”

Underhill opens his mouth, just as a boom of thunder shakes the Institute. This, despite the fact that it was blue skies and sunny five minutes ago.

Jace sighs. “Never mind,” he says, and moves forward.

Meliorn catches up a few moments later, with Underhill following a few paces behind. “You’re a slow learner, Jace Herondale,” Meliorn says, “but you will learn. Eventually.”

Something in his chest twinges at that, at hearing—but he ignores it. _Sure_ , he wants to say, but can’t. He settles for snorting.

Meliorn’s face shifts. Jace has never been particularly good at reading the guy, but he certainly doesn’t look happy. “You doubt my word.”

Jace shrugs. “Well, you can lie now.”

“I can,” Meliorn agrees evenly. His eyes—one brown, one half-brown and half-blue—are distant, unfocused. 

“What? That bothers you?”

“I appreciate that the ability has its . . . usefulness.”

Jace frowns. “That doesn’t feel like much of an answer.”

Meliorn smiles slightly. “See? You are learning.”

Jace snorts again but doesn’t argue. There’s a sudden surge of frustration in his chest—no, not a surge, a rush, a tidal wave of exasperation, of bitter and all-consuming fury—that he’s only just now realizing isn’t his own. “Shit, Alec,” he says, and runs the rest of the way.

Alec’s in one of the training rooms, in the middle of a damn monsoon.

Dark storm clouds have gathered across the ceiling. Lightning cracks, not just inside the room but also outside the Institute. There is water _everywhere_ , shifting in all directions along with heavy wind that—so far—appears to be contained within just these four walls. At the center of the maelstrom is Alec, fists clenching and unclenching, eyes squeezed shut.

A very wet Lorenzo, standing a few feet away, looks more frustrated than worried. Jace can barely hear him through the storm. “Mr. Lightwood, you must—yes, you can. You’ve done it before, countless times. Think whatever sappy thoughts you must about your fiancée, but please _calm down_.”

Alec, eyes still shut, touches his engagement ring, rubbing his thumb back and forth over it—but if anything, the wind only gets stronger, pushing Lorenzo back several steps. Another crack of yellow lightning—the exact color of Alec’s magic—strikes one of the columns, leaving it scorched but, thankfully, intact.

Jace shoulders into the room, bracing against the wind. He puts a hand to his parabatai rune and takes several deep, calming breaths. Alec, he notices, takes them, too.

The rain eases up, fractionally.

“You should’ve told me you wanted to go swimming!” Jace yells as he slowly makes his way to his brother’s side.

Alec huffs. He opens his eyes, but only stares up at the clouds, not looking over even as Jace grabs him by the shoulders. “I can’t . . .”

Misery and hopelessness wash over Jace, intense enough that he almost staggers. “Hey. Enough of that, come on.”

“Jace . . .”

“Come on,” Jace repeats. “You’ve got this, Alec.”

“I don’t—"

“You do. You’ve got this, and I’ve got you.” Jace grins through the downpour. “I can’t lie, remember?”

Slowly, Alec meets his eyes.

It takes a few minutes, but eventually, the wind dies down and the clouds dissipate. Alec slumps to the ground, taking Jace with him.

Tactfully, Jace doesn’t mention that Alec’s newfound warlock mark is still showing.

“Hey, buddy. Hey. You okay?”

“Yeah,” Alec says, because Alec still has the ability to lie through his teeth.

Behind them, Lorenzo clears his throat. “I think that concludes lessons for the day.”

Alec nods wearily and waves a hand. 

Lorenzo steps forward, hesitating. He snaps his fingers, banishing the leftover water, and leans down to pat Alec on the shoulder. “You will get control of this, Mr. Lightwood. You’ve done excellent work so far. I can tell just how powerful of a warlock you’ll be—due to my spectacular tutelage, no doubt.”

Alec’s face doesn’t move, but something inside him slumps further. Jace squeezes his arm.

“Thank you,” Alec says, neutrally, and Lorenzo leaves, walking towards Underhill—who seems happy to see him, for some reason—and past Meliorn, who’s clearly decided to wait out the storm in the corridor.

_Wimp_ , Jace thinks, amused.

“Come on,” he says, helping Alec stand up. “Let’s get you into some dry clothes, huh?”

“I’m fine,” Alec says, leaning heavily into Jace’s shoulder. His magic doesn’t usually exhaust him this badly, but Jace can tell he hasn’t slept in a while. “How did the mission go?”

“It wasn’t a complete success,” Jace says wryly, “nor was it a complete failure.”

Alec eyes him skeptically.

Jace laughs. It’s easier with Alec than anyone. The teasing he can usually deal with, the occasional embarrassing question or two—Izzy and Simon both absolutely love to embarrass him—but sometimes it’s just exhausting, this constant pressure of being on guard, of knowing that someone could rip an important truth from him at any time, and he’d be powerless to stop it. He doesn’t have Big Secrets, exactly, or at least, he’s not hiding anything from anyone. There’s just . . . stuff . . . he’s never talked about. Stuff that’s only _his_.

But Alec, who spent years hiding his truth, never asks Jace a direct question, accidentally or otherwise, unless it’s mission related. Alec lets him just . . . rest.

Jace eyes the circles under his brother’s eyes and wishes he knew how to return the favor. “It was a disaster,” he admits, as they stagger forward, “but no worse than expected. We can talk about it later. Come on, man, how are you, really? How’s Magnus?”

Alec’s mark, just starting to fade, flares back to life as lightning crashes again outside.

Jace winces. “That bad, huh?”

#

“Everything,” Magnus says, fluttering across the loft to his drink cart, “is fine, Isabelle. If your brother doesn’t feel comfortable learning how to use his magic with me, then it’s only right he goes to another warlock. Why he’d pick Lorenzo Rey over Catarina is beyond me, of course: from the little I’ve been allowed to see, Alexander’s magic behaves entirely differently than Lorenzo’s, for all that it shares the same hue. But then perhaps the alliance rune has created a kind of stranglehold bond between the two of them, requiring they spend more time together, or perhaps it’s simply affecting Alexander’s judgment and--I daresay—his intelligence, lowering it to that of Lorenzo’s level. Either way, it’s certainly your brother’s choice, and doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Do tell me if you’d also prefer to study under Lorenzo’s undoubtedly pretentious and inferior tutelage, however. Cocktail?”

He spins around. Izzy is leaning against one of the sofas, smiling slightly, eyebrows high on her forehead. “Feel better?”

Magnus deflates. “A little,” he says, knocks back his own drink, and makes himself another one.

Blatant pettiness aside, he really does mean it: if Alexander doesn’t feel comfortable doing something with Magnus, then he should never feel pressured to do it, whether it’s in the apothecary or the bedroom. And for the most part, things _have_ been good between them, quite wonderful, in fact. Magnus had wanted to get married right away, of course, when they’d first returned from Edom. He hadn’t wanted to waste another moment—but when it became clear that the alliance rune wasn’t going anywhere, that they’d each been permanently changed, well. Alec was mourning, even if he refused to admit it, and it didn’t seem right to rush him. Besides, no moment with Alec was wasted, whether they were married or not.

And just last night, they’d had a fabulous night out, a show in London, a dinner in Paris, before coming back home and simply relaxing together, talking about, oh, all sorts of little, domestic things. A few wedding details, though Magnus hasn’t pushed on a date. Alec, in bare feet and one of his many plain black shirts, had smiled so widely, so carefree. He’s still so . . . enchanting, always, forever. Magnus can’t quite believe that he actually gets to keep him.

That may, of course, be part of the problem.

“It’ll work itself out,” Magnus says now, handing Isabelle a drink and leaning next to her. “And, in any case, it’s not why you came by. What do you think? Should we try summoning spells this time?”

Isabelle tries. She isn’t successful. So far, they’ve tried healing spells, warding spells, glamour, and transfiguration; they’ve even given divination a go, despite the fact that it’s a weak, wishy-washy sort of magic that Magnus doesn’t trust in the slightest. None of it’s any use: Isabelle excels at one type and one type of spell craft alone: battle magic, combat spells. Everything that comes out of her hands is fire.

She stares pensively at the three dummies burning across the room. “Why the long face?” Magnus asks. “Two weeks ago, you couldn’t hit them without also burning down the curtains, the carpet, several priceless Ming vases, and our dining room table. I’d say your aim has improved considerably. You should be proud of your progress.”

“I’ve always been a quick study,” Izzy says, but the smirk doesn’t meet her eyes. “Magnus, my magic. It never changes color like yours. It always, it looks like . . .”

_Ah_. “Yes. The resemblance to heavenly fire is striking.”

“You don’t think . . .”

“My dear.” He smiles warmly at her. “You’re part-Downworlder now too, remember? You have nothing to worry about. Your magic won’t hurt you.”

Isabelle rolls her eyes impatiently. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

“Oh, of course.” Magnus finishes his drink and barely resists making another. “Lightwoods. Always so self-sacrificing. It’s a wonder any of you are able to walk, the way you insist on carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

Isabelle laughs. “Remind me who left his fiancée’s side for a one-way portal to Edom, again?”

Loftily, Magnus ignores that as he strolls over to the still-burning dummies. He eyes one for a moment, then brushes his hand through the flame.

“Magnus!”

Magnus winces—sometimes, even he regrets his own theatrics—and pulls his hand back before quickly casting a healing spell. “See?” he says, showing off his unburnt flesh. “It’s just fire, Isabelle. Deadly, certainly, but directable. It’s the weapon, not you. You can wield it without hurting anyone you love.”

Isabelle inhales and turns away. Magnus gives her a moment, spinning over to his vanity and glancing over his growing selection of eye shadows and mascaras and kohls. He catches his own gaze in the mirror, of course, inevitably sinks down and stares at himself. His magic has been largely unaffected by whatever Nephilim energy exists inside him, with one exception: glamour. He can still apply it to certain objects, but to himself? No. That ability has been lost for good.

He stares at his cat eyes. They stare back, simultaneously alien and familiar.

He spent centuries hating his eyes, what their presence drove his mother to do. He hated everything they reminded him of, everything they represented. Then, after he bargained his magic away, Magnus actually missed what they represented. He missed looking in the mirror and seeing the person he’d worked centuries to shape, to become.

Now, he has his eyes back . . . and they’re forever on display for the world to see, whether he likes it or not. _He_ is forever on display, transparent and vulnerable, with only mundane tools at his disposal to shield himself.

Angels, Magnus suspects, must have particularly sardonic senses of humor.

“I brought some new colors to try,” Isabelle says gently, purposefully startling him from his brooding. “O Pos Red is to die for. It’s going to look so good on you.”

Magnus smiles weakly. Isabelle’s irises are brown again; while casting, they mirror his own—stunning cat’s eyes that gleam yellow or gold, depending on the light—but they always return to their natural color as soon as the spell is done. He’d worried Isabelle would be horrified by them, but of course, she had not. _I look like a badass_ , she’d said happily, as though she hadn’t been one her entire life.

He doesn’t know if Alec has a warlock mark, temporary or otherwise. He won’t ask, not that. Alec deserves his privacy.

Magnus can’t ask a lot of things.

“You have a face, you know,” Isabelle says, sitting next to him, “whenever you’re brooding about Alec. He has one, too. I thought once we got back from Edom, I wouldn’t have to see it for a while.”

Magnus sighs. “I just don’t understand why he won’t come to me,” he says finally. “I was High Warlock a long time. I’ve been helping young Downworlders understand their abilities for centuries. And while I’ve never been Nephilim, I, more than anyone, understand what a crisis of identity he must be feeling right now, what loss. All of you, I’m sure, but—”

“But Alec most of all,” Isabelle agrees, touching the bracelet around her wrist sadly. From what Magnus understands, the adamas in most weapons—including her lovely whip—no longer responds to her. She can hold them without harm, but they won’t function properly in her hands. Though she, at least, still has use of her stele and all her runes. “So, talk to him.”

“No, I don’t want him to feel—I don’t want to pressure him—”

Isabelle rolls her eyes. “So, don’t pressure him. Just talk. Ask him how he is. Tell him how you’re feeling.”

But Magnus doesn’t know how to do that, has never known how to do that. After all they’ve been through, it should be easier by this point—dishonesty is forever hurting them, always the thing ripping them apart—but in some ways, it’s even harder now. Because Magnus did let Alec see once, how he was really doing—

And Alexander had left him the very next day.

He knows that’s not how it happened for Alec. He knows he’s learning the wrong lesson from this, but knowing that and feeling that are such very different things.

Magnus’s nightmares had been awful last night, so awful that he’d woken himself up screaming. Alec had rushed into the room, held him, asked if he was all right—

But Magnus couldn’t answer that, any more than Alec could explain why he hadn’t been sleeping at all.

“It’ll work itself out,” Magnus says again, and Isabelle sighs before letting it go and opening one of her new eye shadows.

#

“That’s looking pretty good, kiddo.”

Clary spins around, startled, but it’s just Luke, standing in the doorway. “It’s not done yet,” she says, removing her headphones. It’s a self-portrait, of sorts, angel and werewolf trying to share the same body, fighting for space. She’s been thinking of making a collection, the Allied 10 in abstract form, though she’s not sure who else would actually appreciate it.

“Okay,” Luke says easily, shrugging. “But I still think it looks great. You hungry?”

She is, actually, but— “What about you?”

He shakes a thermos, smilingly wryly. “Brought a snack.”

Clary ends up buying tacos from a food truck, and they walk for a while before settling down on a park bench. It’s nice. Not mundane, exactly, considering what’s inside Luke’s thermos and the wolf she can feel underneath her skin all the time now, struggling to claw free—but nice. “I’m glad we’re doing this. We both live at the Institute, and we still never spend any time together.”

“It’s been hectic,” Luke agrees. “Though that’s pretty par for the course with Shadowhunters.”

“Well,” Clary says firmly, “we’ll just have to get better at scheduling. It’s important to make time for family. Oh! We should have a family dinner! You, me, Simon, obviously, and Jace. Izzy. Alec, Magnus, Maryse—”

Luke looks down.

“Oh, no,” Clary says. “Luke. Are you and Maryse . . .”

“I’m not sure,” Luke admits, sighing. “Ever since I came back with these—” He grimaces, revealing his fangs. “There’s just been something off between us. She didn’t have a problem with my being a werewolf, but maybe this . . .”

“Well, what did she say when you asked her about it?”

Luke winces.

“Seriously?” Clary throws up her hands. “You’re worse than Alec and Magnus.”

“Hey,” Luke says, mock-offended.

“I mean it,” Clary says sternly. “You have to talk to her. Soon.”

She’s never told him about the conversation she had with Maryse, shortly after Maryse “revealed” that she’d been secretly dating Luke. But it had meant a lot to Clary, hearing that Maryse would never try and replace Jocelyn in Luke’s eyes. Maryse didn’t have to say any of that, to make that effort. Clary has no intention of forgetting it.

“Maryse cares a lot about you,” she tells Luke instead. “I’m sure there’s another explanation.”

“Yeah, well.” Luke drinks from his thermos. “I’m more interested in how you’re doing right now, with all this—” 

He makes purposefully goofy claw-out gestures, and she laughs. “Subtle. I almost didn’t notice the change of subject at all.” She lets him get away with it, though. “I’m okay. When I first found out about the Shadow World, I didn’t think I’d make it. You know, I was supposed to be an art student, not a solider—"

“But you did make it,” Luke says. “And you’ll make this, too.”

“—Actually, I was about to say I was a _much_ better Baby Shadowhunter than I am a Baby Werewolf.”

Luke laughs. “It takes time. How are your training sessions going with Maia?”

Clary makes a face. “I think she’d rather I was training with you.”

Luke shakes his head. “You know you can always come to me, for anything, but it’s important you make connections with actual werewolves. And Maia’s a smart kid. She knows her stuff, and she’ll make a much better Alpha than I ever was. Actually, I always thought you two were a lot alike.”

“Um. I wouldn’t let her hear you say that.”

He ignores this. “She’s helping you now,” he says, “and later, when you’re ready, you’ll be able to help her, too.”

Unless Maia decides she wants to start moonlighting at the Institute, Clary doesn’t have the slightest idea how she’ll ever be able to help her. But Luke, uncharacteristically enigmatic, refuses to speculate and changes subjects again. “How are the other Shadowhunters treating you? Anyone giving you grief I should know about?”

Clary laughs. “Why, are you going to tell the principal about them?”

“I might!”

She laughs even harder, considering the principal in this scenario is Alec, and she can just picture him sitting at his desk, all dour and rubbing his temples, as Luke storms into his office to yell about the mean kids. “No. No one I can’t handle, anyway.”

There have been some, of course, and not just the one who cornered her a few weeks ago, the one she’d clawed across the chest. Clary has long since accepted that she’ll never win some of the Shadowhunters over; to them, she’ll always be a wild card, untrustworthy, a traitor with bad blood. To them, Clary will always be Valentine’s daughter, Jonathan’s sister, a Morgenstern. The fact that she’s also some sort of weird, angel-blooded, werewolf hybrid is only icing on the cake.

It’s not who she is that’s the problem; it’s what she failed to do.

“Hey,” Luke says. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He just looks at her.

“Nothing,” Clary insists, as the wolf inside her skin shifts restlessly. “I’m fine.”

Luke shakes his head. “You know, Jocelyn and me? Sometimes, we’d sit back and marvel at just how talented you are: your art, of course, but also your ability to make connections, to forge deep relationships with people you only just met. You took to memorizing runes immediately, you picked up fighting faster than almost anyone I’ve ever seen . . . but kiddo, the one thing you’re still not any good at? Lying to me.”

Clary sighs. Luke puts an arm around her shoulders.

“There was an attack on the London Institute last week,” she says.

“I heard.”

“A lot of people died.”

“They did. But those deaths aren’t on you.”

“Then who are they on, Luke? I was supposed to save him.”

“You,” Luke says calmly, “were a little girl, having dreams you couldn’t possibly understand about a boy you didn’t have the power to save and problems that were never your responsibility to fix.”

“The angels—”

“Clary. Do you really believe the angels--eternal beings of infinite power and grace--expected a child to charge into Edom and save a boy from the Mother of all Demons?”

Clary laughs, although her eyes are wet. “Well, when you put it that way,” she tries to joke, but the words fall flat. “But then why . . .”

“I don’t know,” Luke admits. “You wanna hear what I do know?”

It’s rhetorical, but she nods anyway.

“What happened to your brother is tragic, but it was your father’s doing, not yours. And no matter what happened to him in Edom, Jonathan made his own choices here on Earth. Those deaths in London are on him, only him. They’re never on you. You hear me?”

If she moves an inch, her wolf might move an inch further, breaking her joints backwards and forwards until it comes loose. If she opens her mouth, she might howl so hard that her guilt and grief grow teeth and claws.

But Luke’s still got his arm around her, and it helps. Somehow, it helps.

She takes a deep breath. “My father isn’t responsible for Jonathan,” she says, when she finally can.

“Clary—"

She turns to look at him. “ _Valentine_ isn’t my Dad, Luke.”

Luke smiles, bright as the sun, and hugs her a little tighter.

#

Alec leans into the bathroom sink, eyes closed against his reflection, against the ache spreading up his neck and across his shoulders and digging into his temples. He’s sure he’s slept sometime in the last 72 hours, he just . . . can’t quite remember when. Uselessly, his fingers hover over his stamina rune, an old habit he can’t quite break. Even if he had his stele, the angelic mark wouldn’t respond to him. Wouldn’t respond to anyone else, either: no one can help him with this, not even to apply something as simple as an iratze. His runes are little more than mundane tattoos now: he can still feel the power trapped inside them, can even bear new ones—useless as they’d be--but he’ll never be able to access their angelic magic again. 

His fingers drift, find his parabatai rune. Somewhere, presumably back at the Institute, Jace is happy. His laughter spreads warm throughout Alec’s chest.

At least, Alec still has this. Every other rune is worthless. He can handle adamas without pain, but—like Izzy—seraph blades won’t light up under his touch. No one at the Institute wants to meet his eyes: they don’t see a Shadowhunter anymore, just a warlock in a costume, and really, they aren’t wrong—but his connection to Jace is still open and as strong as ever. They can sense one another, track together, send each other SOS messages through spilled blood. Alec doesn’t know what he’d have done if he’d lost his parabatai along with everything else. He hasn’t been his own person in years. How could he ever be just Alec again?

There’s a storm inside him, literally. Sometimes, it feels like Jace is the only person grounding him these days.

“Alexander?” Magnus’s voice is uncharacteristically tentative outside the bathroom door. “You haven’t drowned in there, have you?”

Alec swallows. “Be out in a minute,” he calls.

No. No, it’s not just Jace. Magnus is . . . incredible, beautiful, _his_. Alec is unbelievably happy, the kind of happiness he always thought was impossible for someone like him. He doesn’t regret going to Edom for one second; the idea of leaving Magnus there, of losing him? A thousand working runes wouldn’t be worth it. Alec would have done anything for Magnus: became a vampire, stayed in Edom, died. Compared to that, this is nothing. This, he can do this.

But his magic is so volatile; even now, he can feel lightning thrumming throughout his skin, wind stirring between his fingers and at the back of his neck. Lorenzo’s been testing him on various disciplines of magic, and so far, Alec’s been successful with nearly all of them, but instinctually, his magic reacts to the atmosphere, the weather, channeling it, transforming it, amplifying it to terrifying degrees. The more he feels, the stronger his magic responds, and with Magnus, Alec feels so _much_.

Like joy, whenever he manages to make Magnus laugh uncontrollably, even if it’s entirely by accident. For all his easy smiles, it’s rare to see Magnus laugh out loud.

Like frustration, when Magnus gives him yet another fake, bright smile, the kind Alec’s been seeing a lot of lately, in response to questions like “are you okay” and “did you have another nightmare” and “Magnus, what aren’t you telling me?”

Like guilt, that he’s asking anything of Magnus at all, when Magnus never had to take him back, never had to forgive him after Alec had broken his heart.

Like sheer, overwhelming, aching love, whenever Magnus hums absently while summoning breakfast or when he focuses with frightening intensity on some experimental potion he’s worked too hard on. When he talks excitedly about magical theory or nervously rubs the shell of his ear while gifting Alec with some new, ludicrously romantic thing that he claims “isn’t much.”

When it’s just the two of them, hanging out at the loft, Alec can usually—barely—keep a lid on it, but the idea of actually _using_ his magic in front of Magnus, letting it out in the open—just the idea sends a shiver down Alec’s spine. Literally: he just dropped the bathroom’s temperature ten degrees. Last week’s . . . incident . . . at the Institute aside, Alec’s control has improved considerably. But that’s in a controlled environment and, more importantly, with Lorenzo, who he doesn’t have a strong personal connection to. Their professional relationship has moved from one of concealed disdain to grudging respect, but Alec will never look at him and feel all the things he does with Magnus: exposed, beautiful, terrified, awed, loved.

Practicing his magic with Lorenzo is a necessity. Practicing with Magnus is just dangerous. Exciting. Maybe, maybe even intimate—but it’s too risky a daydream. He’s already hurt Magnus once, broke him so badly that he not only tried to rip out his own memories but willingly returned to Asmodeus’s side. Alec refuses, absolutely refuses, to do it again.

Even if he could desperately use his fiancée’s help brewing this stamina rune replacement potion. 

Alec glares at the small, nearly empty bottle in his hands. Magnus had once said mixing potions was the cornerstone of the warlock arts, but Lorenzo, apparently, feels differently, because _he_ called potion work the desperate effort of minor warlocks and not to be bothered with unless absolutely necessary. Alec has a sneaking suspicion that Lorenzo’s secretly embarrassed about his own brewing skills, but pointing that out won’t get him anywhere; instead, he hastily copies a few things from Magnus’s spell books and tries making them on his own. His experiments have been less than perfect. On the upside, they haven’t killed him yet.

Catarina, he’s sure, would be able to help, but her help would come with a seriously unimpressed face and a long lecture that Alec is definitely too tired to deal with right now. It’s been so long since he slept more than a couple hours at a time. It’s not nightmares; it’s work, it’s pressure, knowing that one misstep could have the Clave taking the Institute from him. They could take his runes, his whole world. Honestly, he’s a little surprised no one’s tried to assassinate him yet: some mission that just happened to go wrong. They’d have full plausible deniability. It’s exactly the sort of thing they’d do.

And it’s not even just the stress; it’s also the relief of sleep, dreaming of Magnus and literally setting the sheets on fire. Dreams don’t constitute a controlled environment, and if Magnus hadn’t been out of town, if he’d been hurt—

Alec can’t sleep. He can’t afford to.

He drinks what little of the elixir is left, feeling a minor boost in energy that will, hopefully, keep him alert for the next few hours at least. Then he pockets the bottle and leaves the bathroom, finding Magnus at his vanity. He’s as beautiful as ever—Alec could stare into those cat eyes all day—but his makeup can only cover so much. Underneath it, Alec can still make out the dark purple shadows that Magnus can’t glamour away.

“You good?” Alec asks. “We can put this off another day.”

Magnus huffs. “And wrangle everyone together again, at the same time, in the same room, without all of New York in imminent peril? Alexander, you’ve become an optimist.”

Alec certainly doesn’t feel like an optimist. But he must be, at least a little, or else he wouldn’t be going forward with this plan while the Clave is breathing down his neck.

_They could take your whole life away_ . . .

No. He has to stop spiraling. His life is standing right here, wearing blood red eyeshadow and a sweeping black coat with the most aggressively dramatic collar Alec has ever seen. And if he loses the Institute, then—fine, he loses the Institute, but anyone who tries to sever his connection with Jace is going to a get real close look at either Alec’s arrows or the storm between his palms.

“I’m serious,” Alec says, stepping closer to Magnus. “If you need to rest—"

Magnus smiles brilliantly, falsely. “I’m fine, Alexander,” he says, and spins away to create a portal to the Institute. “Coming?”

Sighing, Alec follows.

It takes twenty minutes for the others—the Allied 10, he thinks, with a suppressed snort—to arrive. Predictably, Simon shows up last, half-tripping over his own feet and babbling seven different excuses simultaneously. Alec holds up a hand; his potion is already wearing a little thin, and if he doesn’t have enough patience for Catarina, then he definitely doesn’t have enough patience for Simon and his . . . everything.

“Thank you all for coming,” Alec says, as everyone settles in various spots around his office. “Most of you know the Downworlder deputy initiative has been approved, however reluctantly. It could be an important first step in getting real political representation for Downworlders in Clave affairs. However, there have been some issues getting the program off the ground—”

“Like, nobody wants to sign up to be the Institute’s first guinea pig?” Maia asks. “Just saying.”

He smiles tightly. Alec respects Maia, and likes her too, when she isn’t being an enormous pain in his ass. “Yes. For all the progress this Institute has made in the past year, the Downworld has, for obvious reasons, continued to mistrust our intentions—"

“I mean, kind of justifiably,” Simon says.

Alec glares at Simon, because isn’t that what he just said?

“—And I’ve gathered you here today,” he says, pushing forward, “because I’m hoping you can help me rebuild that trust.”

He pushes back his shirt sleeve, indicates the alliance rune on his arm, the one that forever changed who and what he is. “I know that this didn’t happen to us on purpose—”

Clary’s eyes flash, literally, regret becoming guilt becoming green incandescence—but Jace wraps one arm around her back, and Izzy, standing behind them, plays gently with her hair. Clary inhales, and the green dies out.

Alec nods at her—does a wolf feel like a storm, he wonders—and continues. “But for better or worse, the ten of us represent the merging of our two worlds, and it’s up to us that decide what that means. We can be a mistake, a fiasco—”

Maia grins at him.

“Or,” Alec says, “we can be a symbol of the future, where the Nephilim and the Downworld stand together as one.”

“Mr. Lightwood.” Lorenzo gets up, clearly three seconds from sweeping out the door. “If you’ve gathered us here under some deluded notion that _we_ should become your first Downworld deputies—"

“Not all of you,” Alec says. “Obviously, that wouldn’t be appropriate for someone in your position. Or yours,” he adds, looking at Maia, who gives him a satisfied nod. “But yes, I admit, for some of you, that’s exactly what I’m hoping for.”

“I could be a deputy?” Simon asks, clearly alarmed by the thought. The alarm quickly becomes bemusement, then excitement. “Hey, I could be a deputy. Jace—” 

“No—”

“You think I’d make a good deputy?”

“Probably,” Jace says. “You’re tougher than you look.” Immediately he hangs his head, as Meliorn, smirking, pats him on the shoulder. “Of course, that’s assuming you stop talking long enough to learn.”

Simon grins wider. “Thanks, man. Hey—"

Alec cuts Simon off, and doesn’t miss the surge of relief from Jace. “These past several weeks,” he says, “Jace, Izzy, Clary, Luke, and I have all been relying on you to help us navigate our new abilities. If you’re willing, I think it’s time we returned the favor.”

Meliorn looks skeptical. He’s not the only one. Even Magnus, who knows what Alec’s about to say, is clearly still wary about his own possible participation. No one’s agreed to anything yet.

“And what, exactly,” Meliorn asks, “can a Shadowhunter offer us?”

“That depends,” Alec says. “How interested are you in acquiring more runes?”


	2. a symbol of the enemy, an omen of destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a humbling realization to discovery that Clary, of all people, has a more reasonable and well-thought out strategy to rescue Magnus, one that doesn’t involve anyone being semi-permanently murdered. The alliance rune is clever, nearly guaranteed to work, and best of all, temporary.
> 
> _Well_ , Alec tries to tell himself later. _Two out of three isn’t so bad_.
> 
> (In which the alliance rune is unexpectedly permanent, and everyone deals with the fallout. In this chapter: runes prove fickle, secrets are revealed, Izzy, Maia, and Clary have a girls’ night, and an assassination attempt is made.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, apologies if anyone is reading this chapter twice! I’m reposting it now because for some reason, it never showed up on the main page, making me very sad.
> 
> Also, trigger warning for a character being (accidentally) compelled to come out against his will. Please check the end notes if you’d like details before you read.

Simon is the first to sign up as a Downworld deputy.

Alec is—well, still kinda scary, to be honest. He may look like just any other surly, tattooed, mundane bouncer who can totally mess you up, but he’s _actually_ Legolas, plus Aragorn, plus Gandalf, plus Oscar the Grouch, all at once. He’s a terrifying boss, is what Simon’s getting at, but he also makes a lot of really solid points. Downworlders working for the Institute is a good idea. Actual representation in the Clave is important. Simon, generally on the side of peace and harmony and making sure clearly bigoted governments never get the opportunity to descend—or return to—a state of fascist regime, respects what Alec’s trying to do here.

Plus, Simon’s just a good candidate for the job since he a) isn’t in charge of any vampire clans—or even _in_ any vampire clans—and thus won’t have to constantly juggle divided loyalties, and b, can pick up the day shift. Not to mention he’ll get to spend way more time with both his best friend and his girlfriend. Jace, too, unfortunately, but you can’t have everything you want in life.

Simon is, maybe, slightly less excited about getting more runes.

He doesn’t have to get them, of course. Alec made it very clear that runes were entirely optional, while also making it very clear that no Downworlder would get any unless they could find some useful way to contribute to the Institute, some benefit that Alec could bring to the Clave as justification for what was, essentially, heresy. Unfortunately for Simon, being a deputy qualifies.

It’s just—okay, Simon adores Fray, and they will be besties for life, but the alliance rune didn’t exactly go as planned, and no one’s really sure why. Who’s to say the fireproof rune won’t, like, burn a hole in his arm or something? Plus, Bubbie Helen really would kill him if he got a bunch of tattoos, and yeah, she doesn’t know he’s alive, but still. Besides, he still has nightmares about the Mark of Cain, ones where he really did kill Clary. Sometimes, Izzy too, or Luke. Last week, he’d had a dream where his mom remembered he wasn’t dead, only when she went to give him a hug, the Mark mistook it for an attack, and—

Anyway. The point is, runes make him a little nervous. And hey, some of them he doesn’t even need, like, strength? Yeah, he’s got that covered. So, sure, he could just decline to participate, except, damn it, he really does respect his scary new boss and appreciates the whole symbology of Downworlders who can bear angelic marks. Like, that could really make a statement. It could let the whole Shadow World know that the angels don’t hate the Night Children as much as certain Nephilim would like to believe. It could be Significant, capital S.

Plus, he really misses his vamp speed. Heightened speed isn’t quite the same, but anything’s better than this. So, Simon asks Izzy for her help, takes a kiss for courage, another for fun, and screws his eyes shut, telling her to go for it—

Only for the rune to utterly fail.

Izzy’s barely finished burning the lines into his skin—which, OW—before it completely disappears. She tries again, fails again. “It must be the alliance rune,” Izzy says, obviously trying to keep her voice steady. “Maybe I just can’t add runes to anyone anymore.”

But then Clary can’t make it work, either. Or Luke, who Simon bonded with, or Underhill, who is the only pure-blooded Nephilim in the room, and by that point, Simon’s pretty tired of people burning him and calls it a day.

“Maybe runes just don’t work on me,” Simon says, not exactly broken up about it.

But no one accepts that, considering the alliance rune hasn’t gotten anywhere.

Once the pain of multiple burns in the same spot finally fades away, Simon agrees to test out other runes. For science, he says, but fools no one, because he really just enjoys researching the Gray Book with Izzy at his side, who explains what each rune does in extremely technical detail—and then later, at night, provides him with considerably less clothed demonstrations of their power.

For all their experiments, though, most runes simply won’t hold on Simon’s skin. He’s most disappointed about stamina for, uh. Pretty obvious reasons. But hey, the memory rune on his shoulder does take, which is awesome! He is going to reread all his X-Men comics and remember every line of continuity _forever_. The soundless rune also works, to Simon’s surprise. He immediately tries to use it against Jace in their next training session, and still ends up blinking at the ceiling.

“Gonna have to work harder than that,” Jace says, grinning, and boops him—actually _boops him_ \--right on the nose.

Simon, who had definitely assumed that he’d primarily spar with Izzy or Clary, silently vows that he’ll knock Jace on his ass if it’s the last thing he ever does.

The runes aren’t the only thing that don’t quite work the way they’re supposed to. Simon still can’t wield adamas without burning the hell out of his hand; the only exception is his stele, and even using that is kind of an unpleasant tingle. A seraph blade is totally out of the question—not that it matters, since Jace won’t let Simon train with a mundane sword, either. Which. Okay, fine, that probably makes sense, but it’s still disappointing. Instead, Simon and Jace fight with sticks, and it absolutely sucks, every minute of it—until, eventually, he starts getting pretty good.

“You did okay today,” Jace says one afternoon, when Simon comes so, so close to finally defeating the obnoxious, stupidly handsome, pointy-eared bastard. In fact, he’s so annoyed that it takes Simon almost a full minute to realize that Jace actually offered up a compliment without being asked for it. Well. Okay. It’s a pretty mild compliment, all things considered. Still, it’s the truth, obviously, because Jace can’t lie, and Jace gave it up for free, simply because Simon’s earned it.

_Okay_ , Simon reevaluates. _Maybe training with Jace isn’t so bad_.

#

Izzy abandons her boyfriend to her brother’s less-than-gentle tutelage, finishes up two autopsy reports on a couple of Eidolon demons, and heads down to her mother’s bookshop. Business is slow at this hour, but she’s not the only visitor: Magnus is here too, which, Izzy’s ashamed to admit, is a relief. Her relationship with her mom has improved so much, but there are still unspoken insecurities, hidden resentments, landmines to navigate. It’s easier to be here with Magnus, somehow, who flourishes about in his usual fashion and never lets the conversation die out. Although, she can’t help but notice, he hasn’t yet addressed the elephant in the room.

Izzy thanks him for the tea he’s served, trying not to stare, but of course, he catches her.

“Ah,” Magnus says, fiddling with his ear. His golden eyes flicker to the side. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the contacts you brought. I’ll still wear them when I need to, but it seems I need to less, in this century. Marvelous, how technology has made something that once almost got me burned at the stake so wonderfully mundane. One more eccentric fashion choice, for a fabulously eccentric man, of course.”

Magnus leans back in his seat, crossing one leg over the other. Izzy expects him to switch subjects—Magnus can be surprisingly guarded, at times—but instead, he continues.

“My magic has always been a part of me, my glamour, too. I’ve rarely thought of it as a disguise. A shield, sometimes, but on the best days, it was simply a representation of myself: either the person I saw myself as, or who I aspired to become. Makeup is such a lovely tool, for creativity and joy and self-expression, but whenever I’ve put in the contacts . . . they feel like a lie. And I find I’m trying to do that less, these days.” Magnus blinks, clearing his throat and offering an embarrassed smile. “Perhaps it’s silly.”

Mom places her hand on his. “Not at all,” she says. “Your eyes are beautiful. I’m so proud of you, Magnus.”

Magnus blinks again, mouth parting. “Thank you, Maryse,” he says, after a moment. “Now! This tea pairs excellently with a particular kind of scone, one I found the recipe for in, oh, the 18th century. Who’s hungry?”

Izzy meets her mother’s eyes, smiles, and silently agrees to let him get away with it. 

She’s proud of Magnus, too, accepting this new part of his existence and continuing to move forward. She can’t say she’s done a great job of that, herself. Izzy’s settling into her magic, at least—every day, the fire at her fingertips feels more and more like it belongs there—but at the Institute . . .

Magnus points at Izzy. “You’re troubled about something. Out with it.”

She laughs. “How do you do that?”

He waggles his fingers. “Magic.”

“It’s a bit obvious,” Mom says, taking a bite of her scone. “Nothing’s wrong with Simon, I hope?”

“No,” Izzy says, smiling. Things with Simon are pretty great, actually; they’re taking things at their own pace, having a good time and not worrying too much about where they’re going or what the future holds. Simon, she knows, will outlive her by centuries—but she doesn’t care about centuries. The far-future fascinates her and she’d love to experience it, to see cultural and, theoretically, even biological evolution in action—but what’s important to her, what she lives for, is today.

So, why is she still holding onto yesterday so hard?

“It’s nothing, really,” Izzy says, trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. “I miss my position as Weapons Master, that’s all.”

“Oh, Izzy,” Mom says.

“It’s all right.” Izzy means it this time, mostly. It would’ve been impossible for her to keep the job, not with an inventory made up of weapons she couldn’t effectively weld or wield. And as her replacement, Underhill has been considerate, even kind. He’s kept her in the loop, too, occasionally asking for her advice, and has never once been snide about the loss of her abilities. He hasn’t even asked for her whip yet, despite the fact that it’ll be much more use in someone else’s hand than where it sits now on her wrist. 

She needs to return it, she knows that . . . but the idea of someone else wearing it before she’s gone, of some Shadowhunter treating it like a tool, rather than the beautiful piece of artistry that it is . . .

“I’ll adjust,” Izzy says because she always has before. “I’ve just been feeling a little useless, lately.”

“You could never be useless,” Mom says firmly, setting down her half-eaten scone. “Never. But . . . I am familiar with the feeling. The past few months have been challenging for everyone, I think.”

“Nothing’s wrong with Luke, I hope?” Izzy jokes, grinning—but her mother’s face falls. “Oh, no. I had no idea. What’s happened? Has he done something?”

“Mind the tablecloth,” Magnus murmurs, and Izzy looks down to see flames flickering around her fingers.

“Oops,” she says, banishing the flames.

Mom laughs. “You don’t need to defend my honor,” she says dryly. “I’m afraid I’m the one who’s made a mess of things. When Lucian’s runes came back, well, I suppose I was envious.”

“Oh, Mom,” Izzy says. “I’m sure if you talked to Alec—”

“No,” Mom says. “Your brother’s relationship with the Clave is precarious enough. Asking favors for his disgraced mother could only hurt him. Besides, this is a punishment I earned; I’ve made my peace with that. And I really do love this place, it’s just . . . with Luke returning to the Institute, and Jonathan still on the loose, and my beautiful children having to navigate these new abilities, I do feel . . .”

“Useless,” Izzy says, gently rubbing her thumb over her bracelet.

“Yes,” Mom agrees, sipping her tea. “I’ve tried not to act any differently with Lucian. My feelings aren’t his problem, and I’d hate to cause him any guilt over becoming a Shadowhunter again—but I’m sure he can tell.”

“Maryse.” Magnus leans forward, catches her eye. “You’re the one who helped me realize your feelings aren’t a burden, not to the ones you love.”

It isn’t, Izzy thinks, a sentiment Magnus has fully realized, or he and Alec would’ve talked about Asmodeus by now. But the words clearly mean something to her mother, who smiles at him.

“We’ll get through it,” Mom says. “Some days are just harder than others, that’s all.”

There’s a long moment of silence. It’s Magnus, of course, who claps his hands and breaks it. “Well! It’s understandable how you both are feeling. Certainly, I’ve been there myself. But you’re both wrong: I don’t think I’ve ever met two less helpless women in my life—and I once met Joan of Arc.”

“Oh, you did not,” Izzy says, laughing.

He ignores her. “Isabelle, you’re incredibly skilled and enormously intelligent. Maryse, you’re wise and courageous and wonderfully cunning. You’ve both helped me these past few months, and neither of you needed runes or seraph blades to do it. Please allow me to return the favor.”

Mom, eyebrow raised, looks half-amused and half-suspicious. “What did you have in mind?”

“What we need,” Magnus says, pouring himself another cup of tea, “is to find you two a hobby—no, no, a trade. Something new you can take pride and purpose in, since you’re both such overachievers that being a soldier and forensic pathologist, or a mother and successful entrepreneur, aren’t enough for you anymore.”

He glances around the bookshop, humming to himself, before breaking out into an enormous smile. “Maryse,” he says, “how would you feel about expanding your inventory?” 

#

Maia doesn’t become a Downworld deputy. The pack would never accept it—which is great, actually, because she can’t think of anything worse than daily patrols and endless reports and adhering to codes she doesn’t believe in. _The law is hard, but it is the law_ —what privileged bullshit, spouted by people who’ve never had to fear imprisonment or death just for being who they are.

Maia’s code goes something more like this: the law is just, or it’s meant to be broken.

Instead of becoming a deputy, Maia signs an official alliance between her pack and the New York Institute. Her part of the bargain is loaning Alec one of her wolves for this new deputy initiative, like a foreign student exchange program, only in this case, she picks the student. She chooses Bat because he’s trustworthy and has a good head on his shoulders, and won’t immediately throw a shit fit about it, unlike Wilson, a newcomer who hasn’t been shy about questioning Maia’s authority at every given opportunity. Wilson has insisted to anyone who will listen that the Downworld deputy program is a bad idea—but that, at least, Maia can sell. After all, having one of their own in the Institute means they effectively have their very own spy.

“I trust Alec Lightwood,” Maia tells her pack, “but if that trust is broken? I’ll tear his throat out myself.”

Which, okay, she probably wouldn’t, not literally. But the sentiment is honest enough. She and Alec don’t see eye to eye on everything—Heidi is still something of a sore spot between them—but if there’s one thing they tacitly understand about each other, it’s this: they’ll both do just about anything to protect their people from harm.

In return for Bat—who’s thankfully more enthusiastic about the job than she expected, probably because of the hot Shadowhunter helping him with the paperwork—Maia is promised Clary’s help in any potential territorial disputes with other werewolves, slightly more autonomy in letting the pack handle their own troublemakers, and nearly any runes Maia wants.

Deciding to permanently alter her skin is a hard decision, one that she takes a long time to make. For one, Maia meant what she said on that disastrous double date: she never exactly saw herself covered in tattoos. She was thinking _maybe_ a second one someday, on her shoulder or something. Runes are a pretty big step from one little butterfly that she mostly got to piss off her parents, anyway.

More importantly, though, Maia knows Wilson will use her runes as just one more reason she’s unfit to be an alpha—and it won’t just be Wilson who’s upset. Besides, there’s always the possibility the runes won’t even work. Most of them haven’t for Simon, after all.

Maia ends up talking to Magnus about it at the Hunter’s Moon, while she’s half-working, half-studying, and he’s drinking martinis while absently researching some kind of spell craft on his phone. Apparently, you really can find everything on Google. 

“It’s not that I don’t see the perks,” Maia says, serving up another glass. “And it’d be nice to get something out of this alliance rune besides a worse sense of smell and a half-werewolf I never wanted—”

“Biscuit has been adorably puppy-like, lately,” Magnus says, smiling fondly. “Always ‘Maia says this’ or ‘Maia wouldn’t like that.’ It’s clear how much your good opinion means to her, even if you drive one another to distraction most days. You’ve become quite the alpha, my dear.”

Maia doesn’t know what to say to that. 

Jace is much more Shadowhunter than Seelie, and Alec, to his clearly repressed grief, is obviously more warlock than Nephilim, but Clary’s caught somewhere in the middle: undoubtedly a Shadowhunter, undoubtedly a lycanthrope. They’ve never once spoken about her joining the pack—Maia’s not sure they would accept her in anything beyond her current “honorary” position—and anyway, Clary wouldn’t actually want to, would she? Not to mention, she really is a fantastic pain in the ass. If “finds trouble” isn’t already a rune, they should make it one and name it Clary.

And if Maia had felt an unexpected surge of protective fury last week when Clary dropped by with a huge, half-healed gash on her forehead from some kind of magic demonic blade . . . well, that doesn’t mean anything except that’s Maia’s frustrated with Wilson and spoiling for a fight. Obviously.

“The point is,” Maia says, desperately trying to find her way back to it, “I wouldn’t say no to a few extra angelic powers. Maybe if I’d had them, when those vamps ambushed us . . .” She loses herself for a moment, then shakes her head and reorients. “But if it’s between the pack and a few tattoos? Then I choose the pack. No question.”

Magnus studies her. Unexpectedly, he sets down his drink.

“Maia. Whether you choose to take runes or not, you’re a fantastic leader. I’ve been around long enough to recognize that . . . hm. That spark when I see it.” Something flits across his face, an almost wounded expression, but he moves on before she can question it. “The choice you’re facing now isn’t between your runes and the pack. It might be hard, but you can have both, if that’s what you want. Your true dilemma is deciding what, in fact, you do want.”

And what does Maia want? Well, that’s easy: to protect her pack at all costs. She wants to make sure there’s never another massacre like the one at the Jade Wolf. Her wolves might feel more comfortable if their leader didn’t bear runes, but would they actually be safer? Things would definitely be easier for her, but would they be better for her people?

_I’d rather lose my position doing the right thing_ , Alec had said, _than keep it by being their puppet_.

Magnus smiles at her. “You’ve made a decision.”

“I guess I have,” Maia says, smiling back. “What about you? I don’t see any angel marks peeking out from under those ruffled sleeves.”

He picks his drink back up, finishes it one go. “I’m still contemplating my options.”

He looks sad enough that she makes him another martini on the house. “If you need to talk about it,” she says, before returning to her textbook, “you let me know.”

Two days later, she’s back at the Institute, going over the Gray Book with Clary. She starts with heightened senses, for obvious reasons, and remembrance, for those she lost. Later, she’ll add endurance, prosperity—which will mean a few less shifts at the Hunter’s Moon, thank God—and deflect.

Each rune applies easily, like they’ve been waiting for her to find them.

#

It’s inevitable, Clary supposes, as she looks down at herself, at the few scraps of clothing still clinging to her skin. Up till now, she’s been lucky, wolfing out at the Institute or very near it, with Simon or Jace or Izzy close by—but now she’s all alone, nearly naked and cowering behind a bakery she likes, a good 45 minutes away from home. No one saw her, at least, and no one got hurt, but . . . but . . . her favorite pair of jeans! And her jacket, _she just bought this jacket_!

Clary, breathing slow like Maia taught her, forces herself to calm down and calls for an immediate extraction.

Izzy and Maia show up together, bringing very different outfits: Izzy hands over a black dress that barely covers more than Clary’s scraps did—just like old times, she says, laughing as Clary frantically changes behind a dumpster—while Maia throws her a basic tank and a pair of old sweats. 

“You come to this place a lot, right? Werewolf protocol. Stash these somewhere.” 

Because this is what Clary’s life has been reduced to, she does, and then demands that she needs a drink.

They get a lot of drinks.

Somehow, they eventually end up at Maia’s apartment, half-watching Magic Mike while playing some drinking game that Clary forgot the rules to about three shots ago, and deciding they should open a pansexual strip club for Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike because, well, the whole peace-between-worlds thing, right? They should totally tell Alec about it, Clary thinks, or maybe says—it’s hard to keep track of which are thoughts and which are words right now? But, yeah, they’ll tell Alec, and he’ll tell the Clave, and all that’s left to decide is which of their ridiculously hot friends would make the best dancers.

Izzy says most Shadowhunters are far too repressed to enjoy that line of work, which is a shame because she suspects shy Helen Blackthorn might have a great time on stage if she got herself up there. Maia suggests Jace, and Clary thinks about it for a minute—oh, it’s a really nice minute—but Jace is more bashful than he likes to pretend, and she doesn’t think he’d enjoy it in the long run. Though clearly both Jace and Helen would do better than Simon or, God forbid, Alec: Simon is completely uncoordinated and would probably fall off the stage, and Alec would obviously just die of embarrassment on the spot—which is such a shame, Maia yells, because Alec clearly doesn’t recognize how hot he is, and Clary knows, it’s RIDICULOUS; he’s almost as hot as Jace! And Izzy’s burying her face in the couch and telling them to stop, stop, those are her BROTHERS! So Clary’s like, yeah okay, but you know, objectively, and Izzy’s all, well, OBJECTIVELY let’s talk about your hot dad Luke then, and Clary’s forced to collapse under the coffee table and die.

Maia, laughing so hard she’s tipping sidewise, calls a truce, saying that Magnus, Meliorn, and Izzy are the obvious choices, anyway. Clary nods, which is funny while lying down. She considers getting up to nod properly, but it’s comfy under the coffee table, so she stays.

“I’d be an excellent stripper,” Izzy agrees, typing furiously into her phone. Clary had tried to take it away from her, but Izzy kept distracting her with drinks and stealing it back. “Lots of practice. Years of being demon bait, plus, I could be my own bouncer! Oh, but I can’t, because I’m doing this secret project with my mom right now.”

“What project?” Maia asks, pouring herself another glass, and not doing a very good job of it, even though she’s a bartender.

“You’re a bartender,” Clary says, which seems important at the time.

“It’s a SECRET,” Izzy says, and demands another drink. Maia’s pouring skills do not improve.

“I’m glad you and your mom are friends now,” Clary tells Izzy earnestly, because she deserves the best, and Clary had the best relationship with her own mom, except for all the secrets, of course, but anyway, she’s dead now, and Clary still really misses her, like, all the time, so much she forgets to breathe. Clary doesn’t tell Izzy any of that, she doesn’t think, even though words and thoughts and she’s really, really drunk—but Izzy figures it out anyway because she’s Clary’s Shadowhunter best friend, her parabatai, maybe, if Clary ever gets the guts to ask—but anyway, sometimes Izzy just knows things. Cause she’s amazing, and has magic now, and also Clary’s crying a little.

Izzy slides heavily to the carpet to give Clary a really awkward, horizontal hug, and Maia says “shit, I’m sorry” and “it’ll be okay” and “here, drink this.” And Clary tries to drink it because Maia is an alpha, HER alpha, hopefully, maybe, kind of, and then Clary says “ow” and thinks there’s probably a reason people don’t hang out under coffee tables all the time.

It takes a while to crawl out of there. Maia helps, because she’s helpful, and Clary wants to help her, too, just like Luke said. “I’ll teach you how to fight like a Shadowhunter,” Clary vows. “Not right now, because everything’s spinning, but later.”

“I should get you some water,” Maia says. “But. So far.”

“I’m on it!” Izzy says cheerfully, pushing herself off the floor, and then falls asleep on the couch instead.

Clary blinks. Should she get Izzy a blanket, are there blankets, whose apartment is she in again? There’s a painting on the wall: Maia, with her beautiful hair and glowing, green eyes, and swirling runes and dark, furry wings. Clary gave it to her last week, but that would mean—did she really keep it? Did she really like it?

Oh, Maia has water, suddenly.

Maia sets a bottle down by Isabelle’s head and sits down on the ground by Clary. “I already know how to fight,” she says, handing over another bottle. “I’m a baller. No. Ball-er. Bowl-er. Like, scrappy, scrapping, ugh, WORDS.”

“What?” Clary asks, because the water bottle’s hard to open and requires all her concentration. Then she remembers. “Oh! But no, like a Shadowhunter. Fight training, like Jace and Simon. It’ll be fun.”

Maia considers it, swaying slightly to the rhythm of her thoughts. “Okay,” she says, finally. “But you have to tell me something first.”

“Anything,” Clary says, eyes wide.

“I know Jace is good, I mean, it was really good when we, uh—but Meliorn once said that Seelies were—and with the alliance rune and all, just, is Jace, you know, BETTER?”

Oh.

“He is,” Clary whispers loudly. “And. I REALLY like his ears—"

A pillow sails across the room, hitting Clary in the face.

“You’re the best,” Clary tells Izzy, nuzzling into the pillow. “Be my parabatai?”

“Forever,” Izzy mumbles, and then she’s snoring again, and Clary happily curls up on Maia’s lap and passes out.

#

Meliorn becomes a Downworld deputy, mostly because he has little other choice.

“I’m surprised,” Isabelle tells him one morning, after they run into one another at the Institute. “I didn’t think you’d be interested in working for Shadowhunters.”

“Perhaps I only wanted to see more of your lovely face.”

Izzy laughs quietly. Her lovely face is half-obscured by large sunglasses, despite being indoors. It’s clear that last night must have been quite festive, though she doesn’t seem to be paying for it half as badly as Clary, who had looked three shades of green when she came inside and has long since staggered back to her room. “Flatterer,” Isabelle says. “How will I ever trust your compliments again?”

Her voice is playful, teasing, so Meliorn tries not to flinch at her words.

“You are always lovely,” he tells her truthfully, but she only frowns and reaches out.

“Meliorn. What’s wrong?”

“Many things, I’m sure. Clary Fairchild, I suspect, would list the evils of liquor as her most paramount grievance.”

“It was a fun night,” Isabelle admits. “And Clary, she—we’re actually going to—”

He smirks. “Have you stolen your brother’s paramour?”

Izzy smacks him on the arm. “Parabatai,” she says, laughing. It’s the happiest he’s seen her in some time. “She asked to be my parabatai.”

He raised his eyebrows. “It’s my turn to be surprised,” he says, because he never imagined Isabelle wanting to tie her soul to someone. “But I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks. Me, too. But you know you can’t throw me off track that easily.” She tilts her head thoughtfully. “Or was that the point?”

Meliorn smiles slightly. “I do enjoy it,” he says, “how always you can see me. Outright lying may have its advantages, but also, its disadvantages. It’s very like cheating. And, of course, we might never have engaged in any of our . . . mutual interrogations if I could simply have lied to you at every turn.”

“I’m sure we would’ve found other games worth playing,” Isabelle says wryly. “Do you regret being able to lie?”

_Yes_ , Meliorn thinks.

“No,” Meliorn lies pleasantly. He might as well get used to it.

But Isabelle just laughs at him. “If you’re going to start lying, please, let me help. You have to do more than just say the words.” She grows more serious as she studies him. “You know, just because you can doesn’t mean you have to. If you feel uncomfortable—"

“I have no moral scruples about telling falsehoods,” Meliorn says, amused by the thought. “It’s only that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, at least for me.”

Isabelle thinks about that. “I believe you,” she says, and something must flicker across his face, because her lips part in a silent ‘o.’ “That’s the disadvantage: you’re considered less trustworthy. Not by Shadowhunters; they’ve never trusted Seelie, anyway. It’s your people. The Queen?”

He sighs. “The Queen finds beauty in the singular, the unusual. She highly prizes that which is different—but admiration and trust are not the same thing, and since going to Edom, my loyalties have been questioned at court by those who are less open-minded about my new abilities. The Queen decided it would be best if I served her elsewhere, for a time.”

“Oh, Meliorn,” Isabelle says, squeezing his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

He could lie and say that it’s all right. But he doesn’t want to because it isn’t, not yet. “Perhaps you can guide me in the art of choosing runes. If, of course, you have the time. I’m sure you’re—"

“Any time,” Isabelle says firmly, and something inside Meliorn settles, knowing that she speaks the truth, even though she doesn’t have to.

He feels less alone in this, somehow.

Meliorn has no use for Shadowhunter weapons; he much prefers his own. Runes, however, intrigue him. He chooses ones that focus on perception: the enlightened rune, the expectation rune. The promise rune, which Shadowhunters wear under oath, is not permanent, but remains his favorite by far.

He wakes up each morning before patrol and applies it directly over his heart.

#

Alec doesn’t like surprises.

No, that’s not true. Alec likes surprises just fine, if Magnus is the one behind them. Somehow, he always comes up with something that Alec would never buy or do for himself, but also don’t completely embarrass him. His siblings, on the other hand, cannot be trusted with the latter.

So, yeah. He’s a little tense as Izzy leads him, blindfolded, through their mother’s bookshop: weary down to the bone, not to mention having flashbacks to his “bachelor party.” He’s still not entirely sure what goes on during those things—he’s long since stopped trying to understand inane mundane customs—but he’s relatively sure it’s supposed to be more drinks, less forced reconciliations between parabatai. Although, Alec thinks grudgingly, it didn’t go too badly.

Still, he’s currently on speaking terms with everyone he cares about, so that’s probably not what this is. Unless Magnus . . . but no, they don’t need a sit-down.

All right, fine. Yes, they absolutely do: things have been more challenging than ever lately. Magnus has had fewer nightmares the past few weeks—Alec thinks, anyway, although it’s hard to be sure because he usually slips back to the Institute once Magnus has fallen asleep—but he’s still clearly troubled by something, and he won’t let Alec help him; he won’t talk about anything real. Even their wedding planning doesn’t feel real anymore, like it’s some idle daydream that might happen or might not. Two days ago, Alec had asked if Magnus had thought about a date, and Magnus had gone utterly still before fluttering a careless hand and going to make himself a second drink before finishing the first one. _No need to worry_ , he’d said easily. _I’m not in any rush_.

Alec, who hadn’t been worried, is very worried now. He knows he needs to confront Magnus, tell him he loves him, that he’s not leaving until Magnus explains what’s wrong. But what if Alec is what’s wrong? Maybe Magnus doesn’t want to talk about a wedding date because, secretly, he doesn’t want to get married anymore. Everything had happened so fast, after all: the deal with Asmodeus, Magnus’s proposal, the rift to Edom, the alliance rune. Emotions had run high, but now that they’ve both had time to think—maybe Magnus won’t talk about anything real because he knows everything he has to say will break Alec’s heart.

It’d be no more than Alec deserves. But he can’t have that conversation, not yet. Alec is still too volatile. He has to be sure. He has to be safe.

“Couple more steps,” Izzy says from behind him. “We’re almost there.”

He shakes his head. This really is just like the last time, right down to the color of the blindfold he’s wearing. “If this is another intervention—"

Izzy laughs. “You trust me, don’t you?”

“Nope. Still don’t.”

“Liar,” Izzy says, and directs him forward.

He still can’t see anything, but the bookshop isn’t that large, so Alec can tell when Izzy leads him into the backroom, and then . . . into another room? “Uh, Izzy?” he asks, because there _isn’t_ another room, or at least, there wasn’t two weeks ago when he stopped by with lunch.

“We’ve done renovations,” Izzy says, “with a little help from your fiancé.”

Alec opens his mouth—and then stops because there’s someone else in the room with them. His fingers automatically itch for an arrow. “Mom?” he asks warily. It’s her shop, after all, but then why all the secrecy, why—

“It’s all right, Alec,” Mom says. “Your sister’s just being dramatic.”

“A new venture deserves a little drama,” Izzy protests, pushing Alec forward. “Now count to five and—Alec!”

Alec didn’t count to five last time, so he doesn’t know why she’s surprised when he immediately rips off the blindfold now—only to find himself surrounded by wall-to-wall weapons: broadswords, rapiers, daggers, axes, flails, maces. “What . . .”

“Your sister and I were . . . bored,” Mom says, and he wonders how many other feelings she silently discounted before landing on that one. “Magnus suggested we consider expanding our inventory to include something we both enjoy.”

“So, Mom and I got to talking,” Izzy says, visibly excited. “And we figured that when your initiative really takes off—”

“If,” Alec says, arms crossed.

“ _When_ it takes off, most of your deputies won’t be able to use seraph blades or almost anything else from the armory. I spoke to Underhill, and he’s happy to handle the adamas-based inventory, while we make the rest.”

There are a ludicrous number of weapons in this room. “You two made all these?”

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Izzy says. “Turns out, Mom and I actually work pretty well together.”

Mom smiles. It’s something she didn’t do very much while he was growing up, although Alec didn’t realize it then, maybe not until he started smiling more, himself. This one is pleased, almost shy, as she glances at the ground. “We’ll also be selling weapons to other Downworlders,” Mom says, “provided they pass certain background checks: criminal history, purity of intent—”

Alec raises his eyebrows.

“One of the spells we commissioned Magnus for,” Izzy explains. “Just to confirm that none of our customers are planning to run out and murder someone right away.”

“Well,” Mom says, and she almost doesn’t sound nervous, “what do you think?”

“I think it’s great,” Alec says honestly. It’s a good idea and clearly means a lot to them, though why they—and Magnus, apparently—kept it such a big secret confuses him.

At least, until Maryse asks, hesitatingly, “Do any of them call to you?”

He stares at her.

“We know you have your bow,” Izzy says. “Between that and your magic, you really don’t need another weapon. Neither of us needs a seraph blade to be a Shadowhunter, but we thought maybe you’d like something, anyway.”

“It’s the other spell Magnus provided us with,” Mom says. “It helps the client find the right weapon, the one meant for them.”

“Like a Shadowhunter,” Alec says. His throat feels a little tight.

Mom nods. “Very similar, yes. It’s a custom-made spell that should work with Downworlders and Nephilim alike. Magnus was very insistent we mention that.”

“There were so many technical details,” Izzy says, rolling her eyes. “Don’t ask him about them unless you want a three-hour lecture on magical theory.”

Magnus gets very excited about magical theory. Silently, Alec plans to ask him about every technical detail as soon as he gets home.

“The only problem,” Izzy says, “is that the spell doesn’t work on Mom or me because we welded the weapons ourselves.”

Alec stares at her. “Izzy,” he breathes, before immediately running out of words. She’s the one who needs this, after all, the one who actually did lose her signature weapon, even if she’s still wearing it. And Mom, whose weapons were taken away—they deserve this so much more than he does.

“It’s okay,” Izzy says, smiling sadly. “We’re doing something else. But in the meantime, we really need someone to test out your fiancé’s spell. What do you say, big brother?”

How could he ever say no to either of them?

Hesitating, Alec steps forward, glancing around. The weapons are all beautifully crafted, not that he’d expect anything less from Mom or Izzy. The first time he did this, he told himself to be careful, to think it over, that this was an important decision and not to be taken lightly—before immediately finding his bow and uncharacteristically throwing caution to the wind. 

Now, Alec does take his time, hands behind his back as he glances over everything. He tries to tell himself not to be ridiculous, that he’s lucky with what he has and that no new, special weapon is going to heal that ache inside him, that sense of loss. There’s a sinking feeling in his gut, though, a slowly growing certainty that this isn’t going to work, that no weapon will call to him and he’ll have to explain that the spell failed because he just isn’t one thing or the other anymore. He’ll have to watch Izzy’s face fall, Mom’s smile crumble. They’ve both worked so hard for this. He’ll have to go home and tell Magnus, too. Magnus’s smile won’t falter, of course; it’ll just be false, covering emotion that he doesn’t trust Alec with anymore.

Alec’s hands are sparking. He squeezes his eyes shut, frantically willing the electricity to die out, before hearing Izzy behind him. “Alec,” she says, and there’s something unexpected in her voice. Happiness. Awe.

He opens his eyes.

The gold sparks haven’t disappeared; instead, they’ve floated, trailing from his fingers to a scimitar in the corner of the room. Alec, swallowing, steps towards it. The blade is wide and sharply curved, entirely unadorned until Alec picks it up: then, his magic circles the weapon again and again, leaving behind a black deflect rune on the blade, perfectly matching the one on his own neck.

There’s a long moment of silence. Then Mom, leaning into Izzy’s shoulder and wiping her eyes, says, “Well, I guess it worked.”

The scimitar is remarkably light in his hand, and maybe it doesn’t magically heal everything, but it still makes Alec feel a bit better, all the same.

#

Lorenzo, obviously, doesn’t become a Downworld deputy; as he immediately made clear to Mr. Lightwood, such work is completely beneath a man of his position. Lorenzo has worked years, worked centuries, to get where he is now. His warlocks may someday choose to take that power away from him, but until then, he means to lead, not become some Shadowhunter lackey. He’s earned this spot of High Warlock, and he owes the Nephilim nothing.

Admittedly, some are more tolerable than others. For all his exceedingly poor taste in men, Mr. Lightwood is a good leader and, more importantly, an excellent pupil. Lorenzo has unfortunately grown somewhat fond of him, to the point that he feels some—clearly misplaced—regret about how he handled the whole “possessed parabatai” situation. If he knew then what he knows now . . .

But any immortal who’s survived his first century knows not to linger over regrets: hindsight is briefly useful, before quickly becoming dangerous. Holding a grudge is perfectly respectable, but holding onto mistakes is something else entirely. Lorenzo refuses to dwell.

Most of the other Shadowhunters, of course, are barely tolerable: the blond one is too full of himself, oblivious; the redhead brash and almost aggressively idealistic. The brunette is . . . fine, he supposes. A warlock, too, if a limited one. He has no particular relationship with her, though if she came to him for aid, he supposes he would be obliged to help. Fortunately, that seems an unlikely scenario; she and Bane are fairly close. He supposes it’s unsurprising: they’re bonded, and Bane has always had so many little friends. He’s made allies of them all, somehow, even Lucian, who Lorenzo has never been on particularly good terms with, not when he was a werewolf, certainly not when he was in the Circle, and not now that he’s a vampiric Nephilim. 

As far as Lorenzo is concerned, there are really only two Shadowhunters worth knowing: Mr. Lightwood, who he respects and could, someday, call a friend, and, of course, Andrew.

Andrew leads him into the armory. Lorenzo has no interest in runes—the one he’s stuck with is quite enough. He’s suffered no ill effects from it: no loss in magic, no physical alterations or damage to his impeccably refined palate—the _things_ these Shadowhunters eat. But a fledgling alliance with the New York Institute doesn’t mean he’s eager to have this . . . angel mark, this mar to his skin forever linking him to the people who, mere decades ago, openly hunted down his own kind for no other reason than their presumed superiority. He certainly doesn’t want more runes. Even if he did, any challenger someday vying for High Warlock easily could, and would, use such runes against him.

No. Lorenzo’s worked too hard for this.

A weapon, he reasons, is different. Swords can be fashionable. They can be pieces of art. He can even commission a new portrait, with him holding his new blade aloft—oh, that would be nice; it’s been years since he’s had a good portrait. There’s an art, too, in the process of forging a blade, especially when someone as handsome as Andrew is working the forge. Lorenzo has spent more than one night at the Institute, watching him work.

Andrew presents a seraph blade. He made it himself, just for Lorenzo. It will almost certainly be wasted effort: not only are there plenty of unclaimed seraph blades Lorenzo could have used—a Shadowhunter’s expected lifespan is so short, after all—most likely, he won’t even be able to wield it. But Andrew had insisted that the first seraph blade Lorenzo held should be special, even if it didn’t work. For being such a reasonable, mild-tempered soldier with a fashion style that could be best described as incognito, Andrew can be a surprising romantic, sometimes.

They did, at least, already confirm that adamas will no longer burn Lorenzo. It’s only seeing if the blade will come alive in his hands, or stay dormant.

“Don’t worry if it doesn’t work,” Andrew says. “You can always pick a signature weapon down at the bookshop, something that’s just right for you.”

_Nothing could be right for me_ , Lorenzo thinks, _if you’re not the one who made it_.

He doesn’t say it out loud, but only just. It’s ludicrous: Andrew is an enchanting man, and indeed, a wonderful lover, but they’ve only been officially seeing each other, what, a scant few weeks? That’s a blink of an eye to a warlock, much too soon for emotions like this. Spending so much time with Mr. Lightwood and his soppy feelings for Magnus Bane has clearly infected him.

Lorenzo takes the seraph blade in his hand. It glows blue under his touch.

“Actually,” he says, “I think this one suits me quite nicely.”

Andrew is romantic, but private. As a rule, he doesn’t like to kiss Lorenzo at the Institute.

He breaks this rule now. Lorenzo is delighted to let him.

#

Jace sits, slumped against a wall, in some deserted corridor of the Institute. _It was inevitable_ , he thinks bitterly, but just because that’s true doesn’t mean it helps. Which, great, that’s the actual story of his life now.

It really was inevitable, though. Jace can admit it: he’s always had a big mouth, even before the alliance rune. And Simon can babble for twenty minutes straight without stopping to take a breath: asking personal questions, giving unwanted opinions, making nerdy, little, mundane asides that he’s still outraged no one understands. Neither of them are quiet while training: Jace because he likes to shit talk, and Simon because he just never shuts up. Jace was always going to slip, always going to give up something he meant to keep close.

He just. He thought it might be about his last name, that longing he sometimes gets to belong to a house that isn’t made up of dead people. Or even something much more shameful: that sometimes, late at night, a small piece of him actually misses the man who killed him—misses Michael Wayland, anyway. 

He never really thought it would be about this.

There are footsteps down the hall. Not Alec—he’s been stuck in meetings all day and getting progressively frustrated with them, either because he’s forcing himself to smile at people he’d rather attack with his new scimitar, or because he can feel that Jace is upset and can’t come rushing to the rescue. Probably both. Jace smirks a little, feeling electricity in his chest that doesn’t belong to him. _Calm down, buddy_ , he thinks, knowing Alec will pick up on the intent, if not the exact words. _I’m okay_.

Alec sends back some crackle of surly intensity that Jace chooses to translate as _bullshit_.

Simon couldn’t stop apologizing, after he realized what Jace had admitted. _Oh, dude, I’m so—I didn’t mean to, I didn’t realize, but—it’s okay, you know that, right? It’s totally great. And I won’t say anything, if you don’t want me to, just, man, I am so, so sorry_ — 

Jace had cut Simon off. _It’s fine_ , he’d tried to say. _I’m not fine_ is what he’d actually said.

Somehow, that cut deeper than what he’d revealed in the first place.

Trying to tell Alec he’s okay is different. Lying through the parabatai bond is almost like lying to himself: Jace can send Alec any reassuring thoughts he wants. It’s just not really worth it because Alec never believes him.

Jace is okay, though, or close enough, at least. It’s a dumb thing to be upset about, anyway. Not even a big deal.

The hesitant footsteps draw closer. “Go away, Simon,” Jace says, without looking up. “It’s—”

Nope. Still can’t say it out loud.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jace says instead.

“Unfortunately, we don’t get to pick and choose what our friends worry about.”

Jace startles, glancing up. Magnus stands a few feet away, watching him carefully. “May I sit?” he asks.

Jace shrugs. “Free hallway,” he says. “Can’t say the last time these floors were swept, though.”

Magnus glances down at his outfit—a purple velvet jacket and black pants with matching glitter, both of which probably cost more than anything Jace owns—and sits down anyway. “How—” he starts, then stops. “No, I’m sorry. I ran into Simon downstairs. He seemed quite distressed.”

Jace clenches his fists. “Did he?”

“He didn’t tell me much,” Magnus assures him. “Only that he’d said something stupid, and that I might want to check up on you.”

Jace eyes him. Magnus is watching him with far too much sympathy. “You know anyway, though. Right?”

“I know that you and I have precious little in common,” Magnus says. “Other than your brother, of course, and I can’t imagine Alec is the reason you’re hiding out here, alone, in some forgotten, filthy corner of the Institute.”

“Yeah. How did you even find me, anyway?”

Magnus sighs deeply. “Does no one remember I have magic?”

“Hard to forget, considering how Alec practically threw himself on his sword to get it back.”

Magnus stills.

“Shit,” Jace says. “Sorry.”

“No, no. It’s my fault for not being more careful in my wording.”

“Have you guys talked about any of that yet?” Jace asks, even though he already knows the answer. Alec goes home for the night, then returns a few hours later, when he bothers to leave at all. He must be sleeping—he’d be dead by now, if he wasn’t—but whatever sleep he’s getting clearly isn’t enough. Alec is so tired that _Jace_ is tired; even now, his head and shoulders ache with fatigue. He’s going to have to sit Alec down, if something doesn’t give, but he’s been trying to avoid it. Alec is too tense; Jace is worried about backing him into a corner, and besides, it’s obvious that it’s not Jace who he really needs to hear from.

Magnus inspects his nails, carefully expressionless. “Not as such.”

“Then maybe it’s my brother you should be talking to right now, not me.”

“If your brother was available to talk, he’d already be here,” Magnus says. “And if you want me to leave, you only need say the word. But I thought you might want the ear of someone . . .” His lips twitch, a smile Jace can’t quite parse. “Sympathetic.”

Jace looks at him. “We’re not the same.”

Magnus snorts. “Obviously. This coat would look ridiculous on you. And I barely lived here a day before I started hemorrhaging copious amounts of blood—yes, yes, Lorenzo’s magic, but also, the terrible screens, the terrible food, the judgmental eyes everywhere, watching incessantly. This place is clearly a poison to anyone with taste—I have no idea how your sister survives it—and yet, you call it home. We don’t have to be the same to have this one thing in common.”

Jace shakes his head. “No, you don’t get it. It’s not just because you’re so . . .”

“Fabulous?”

“Flashy,” Jace says flatly. “It’s not about that. It’s just . . . look, I know what I am, okay? It took me a while because it’s not a 50/50 split for me; it’s different, I didn’t really see men like _that_ for a while. Alec, he had it so hard. Everything he learned growing up, it was just constantly telling him who he loved was wrong, who he _was_ was wrong, that he was sick. But me, I always liked girls too. More, usually. I never had to make any hard choices. I’ve never even been with . . .”

“Jace—”

“I’m not like you,” Jace says. “You’ve been with all kinds of people. It’s more real for you—”

“No,” Magnus says gently. “Who you are is always real. It’s how you feel, not who you’ve slept with.”

“It’s not just sex,” Jace says. “It’s anything. And I won’t do anything, either, because I’m in love with Clary. I’m always gonna love Clary, so this thing I feel sometimes, it doesn’t even—it doesn’t even—”

But he can’t, he CAN’T—

_Like, sure, it’s a blow to the ego when your girlfriend drunk-texts you, wanting to know who would make a hotter stripper: her brother’s fiancé or her ex, but hey, I know my league, I’m very comfortable with it, and besides, Izzy’s clearly wrong, like, I know you’re straight, right? But between_ — 

_I’m not straight_.

“It matters,” Jace says, the words ripped from his throat. “It matters. It matters to me.”

Hesitatingly, Magnus touches his arm.

“It’s okay, Jace,” Magnus says. “It’s allowed to matter.”

#

Magnus doesn’t become a Downworld deputy. Not exactly.

Lorenzo signs a pact with Alec that’s very similar to Maia’s, namely, Lorenzo gets a shiny sword and free access to visit his new boyfriend whenever he wants, and Alec gets a pet warlock on permanent loan. It’s an arrangement that works well for everyone involved, and the only loss is Magnus’s dignity.

He can live without it, of course, spent a very blurry few decades in Prague without any dignity to speak of at all . . . but he draws the line at being a deputy, a title that conjures horrifying images of drab uniforms, and no doubt comes with duties that the former High Warlock of Brooklyn refuses to be seen doing. He’s perfectly happy to assist with wards or cursed items or the next suicide mission to save the world from total destruction, but he is Magnus Bane, and no one, not even the love of his life, will get him and his impeccable nails on ichor duty.

Still, he’s hesitant about handling a seraph blade, and even more hesitant about runes. For one thing, he has no idea how Alec will take it if Magnus can wield a blade that he, himself, cannot. Will Alec look at his runes and try to swallow his envy, his bitterness, as Maryse has tried to do? Will Magnus, himself, be yet another source of grief? He can’t bear the thought.

His trepidation, however, is not only because of Alec.

Magnus finds himself down at the Hunter’s Moon, drinking possibly more cocktails than is strictly advisable at eleven in the morning and belatedly taking Maia up on her offer to talk. He has very few confidantes these days: Catarina and Madzie are presently out of town, as is Raphael—his beautiful boy, so happy now, so young and weightless in the afternoon sun. And, of course, this is something he can’t talk about with Alec, or Biscuit, or any of the other Shadowhunters he’s grown to love, who weren’t alive for the centuries where _their_ kind hunted _his_ kind. A rune is just a rune to them. They’ve never seen it as a symbol of the enemy, an omen of destruction.

Dramatic, of course. He’s forever being dramatic. After all, Magnus has come to trust Shadowhunters again over the past year—most of them, anyway. He’s come to love them, even. But a year simply cannot erase centuries of memories, and no matter how beautiful Alec is, how appealingly those angelic marks curve on his skin, to see them on Magnus’s own flesh? He’s not sure how he feels about that. The one he already has is . . . strange. Sweet, in that it binds him to Isabelle in some lovely, ineffable way, but strange.

He’s not sure the Shadowhunter legacy is one he wishes to be bound to.

Of course, legacies are, as a rule, a thorny concept for immortals.

Catarina would understand. Raphael, too. And he could portal to them, of course, but they’re both doing so well without all his . . . waffling, his endless drama. He doesn’t want to burden them with his ridiculousness; after all, the world isn’t ending. He’s engaged to a beautiful man. His demonic father is gone for good. There’s no reason to feel anything other than happy right now, and he can’t expect people to hold him up forever.

_You’re the one who helped me realize your feelings aren’t a burden_.

But this is different. Magnus isn’t Maryse. She’s strong and wonderful and never in danger of being too much.

In truth, he hadn’t meant to burden Maia, either, but conversation had turned naturally to runes, and anyway, a bar so often becomes a confession booth, only with beverages and better background music. Besides, while she may not have lived for centuries, Maia certainly understands oppression. Politics, too.

“It’s possible,” Magnus tells her, “that other warlocks might trust me less, were I to go forward with this.” His smile is sharper than he means it to be. “I couldn’t exactly blame them for that.”

Maia sets down another drink, eyebrow raised. “I don’t know. Kinda sounds like you blame them for something.”

All right. As a matter of fact, Magnus does blame the other warlocks for any number of things. Turning their back on him after his misjudgment with the Seelie Queen—a decision which many of them strongly supported—as if Magnus hadn’t spent decades protecting his people, sheltering them, helping them escape the wrath of the Uprising. He blames them for obeying Lorenzo’s petty commands without question, even with Lilith, Queen of Hell, on the loose. He blames them for not helping when he lost his magic. He blames himself, for all of it, but he’s come to blame them too, bitterly.

It will pass, he supposes, in a century or two. And if a warlock came to his door tonight, Magnus would still offer aid—but right now, he doesn’t feel like he owes them much, certainly not input over decisions he makes about his own body. There’s a reason he hasn’t fought harder to become High Warlock again. He could possibly do it—Lorenzo isn’t the shiny, new thing anymore, and not everyone likes how he’s handled the job—but even if it was a certainty, Magnus wouldn’t try. Partially because he doesn’t want to break the fragile truce he and Lorenzo have made since returning from Edom, but mostly because losing his position was . . . incredibly painful. With time, that pain has lessened, a door that he’s shut behind him. He’s in no hurry to turn around and open it again. More and more, he wants new doors, new paths. Forward motion.

And the thing is, he’s curious.

Magnus wants to know if the runes will take. He wants to know which ones, and why, and if there will be any unexpected side effects. He’s fascinated by the idea of how demonic magic and angelic magic will interact in one body. To make a proper study of it, he’d need Lorenzo’s cooperation as well, but Magnus isn’t surprised by his decision: Lorenzo is a political animal, not an academic; his curiosity has always been somewhat lacking. Besides, Magnus acknowledges, grudgingly, Lorenzo has his own centuries of ugly memories to consider.

In his more hopeful, idealistic moments, the runes sound . . . transformative. Symbols he’s chosen himself, reflective of who he is and where he’s going. There’s also something undeniably romantic about the idea of sharing runes with Alexander—particularly the wedded union rune, never before a possibility. But now it is; there are so many possibilities, and the only real thing holding Magnus back from embracing them is the past.

“The problem,” he says, draining his glass in one go, “is that if you live long enough, the past always becomes the future. People fight for a cause, then forget why they fought, and all the history books are written with happy endings. Enjoy it, they say, there’s no more work to be done—but there’s always work to be done, hard work that’s sneered at. Children lose the precious rights their grandparents fought so hard for. How many generations will it be this time, do you think, before Shadowhunter children are taught to come for our fur, our fangs, our eyes?”

Maia shrugs. It’s not a careless gesture, for all it’s clearly meant to look like one. “I don’t know,” she says, serving him another glass with a warning finger. _One more_ , as if he can’t just magically clear his blood alcohol level and start again. “But I don’t think ‘the future is doomed to suck’ is a good enough reason to ignore it.”

Magnus meets her eyes. She doesn’t flinch from them.

Maia runs her fingers over the rune on her bare shoulder. Both arms are covered in them now; they’re lovely, just like she is. “I’m not saying you need these. You don’t. You think they’ll trigger something, hurt you? Don’t do it. But if you want something, and you’re holding yourself back because, someday, you might regret it? Sounds like a losing strategy to me. It’s sure not the way you got Alec.”

He smiles because it sounds like something Ragnor might say, albeit considerably more American. It’s nice, he thinks, to get good advice from someone who’s still alive.

And he is, after all, all about effort.

“You’ve made a decision,” Maia says, smiling.

“Yes,” Magnus says. “I suppose I have.”

He heads to the Institute the next day. He tries the seraph blade first. Interestingly, it lights up in his hand—only it glows red, instead of a softer blue. Magnus quite likes it, in fact, although that doesn’t stop him from purchasing a separate weapon from Maryse and Izzy: a slender rapier with a wonderfully ornate pommel and excellent balance that finds his hand almost the moment he steps inside.

Runes, however, end up being much trickier.

The first rune he chooses, after careful consideration, is the deflect rune, which he places very near his heart: the symbolism doesn’t escape him, but it feels right, so he commits to it. He shows Alec shortly afterwards, hesitant and fidgeting, unsure what he’ll see in his fiancé’s eyes. Bitterness? Disappointment? Perhaps carefully hidden revulsion, at the sight of the sacred written into a warlock’s chest? That last is certainly silly—this was Alec’s idea, after all—but Magnus can’t help but worry. It’s one thing to conceive of something, another to actually see it in the flesh.

The very last thing Magnus expects is the hunger in Alec’s eyes, but it’s there anyway, as Alec touches the rune reverentially, then licks it.

They find a bedroom very quickly. And it’s lovely, until Magnus pretends to fall asleep to see what Alec will do, and Alec immediately runs away. Again.

Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that runes won’t work as easily for him as they have for Maia or Meliorn. Nearly each one takes perfectly to his skin; actively using them, however, often comes at too high a price: they burn badly to activate, then burn hotter the longer he uses them for. Healing magic cools his skin quickly enough, but it also douses the angelic power, making the rune dormant once again. Rarely is it worth the trouble, considering Magnus can simply use his own magic to accomplish most anything he desires. Except glamour, of course, the only rune besides an iratze which will apparently not work at any price.

Fate, he is sure, is having quite the laugh at him.

Magnus’s runes, then, are largely symbolic. It doesn’t particularly bother him, nor is he troubled by the few warlocks who think he should’ve followed Lorenzo’s shining example. Some of those warlocks are quivering sheep who couldn’t form an original opinion if they tried. Another persists in wearing a vaguely curled mullet, a hairstyle that has never been acceptable even when it was. So, no, Magnus doesn’t overly concern himself with their short-sighted opinions about anything. Instead, he researches and experiments and buys himself even more clothing that drapes openly, and if he occasionally doodles the wedded union rune on his academic notes like a lovesick child, well, that’s absolutely nobody’s business but his own. 

They’ll get married, they will, just as soon as Alec is actually ready. They’ll work all this out somehow, and Alexander won’t leave him again, isn’t leaving now, no matter how many lonely nights they spend apart. Alec won’t stop loving him for being too much, or not enough. 

Magnus almost believes this.

One day, accompanying Alexander on a mission upstate, Magnus expends all of his magic banishing a greater demon, then gets flung Lilith knows where by a tendril of some retributive curse. He ends up exhausted and alone, half-conscious and bleeding sluggishly from several places. With trembling fingers, he grabs his stele and activates his guidance rune: it’s the only form of tracking rune he’s tried yet. It’s supposed to lead him back home.

There is absolutely no way he’s making it back home. Who knows how far the loft is, in relation to here? He’s not even entirely sure he’s in the country anymore, much less New York, and his arm is burning and burning and _burning_ at his side. Magnus walks straight until he can’t, then sways vaguely forward until he falls, then crawls, disoriented, thinking _home, home_.

“Magnus!”

The guidance rune, it seems, understands that home doesn’t have to be a structure, because it doesn’t lead him anywhere near the loft. Instead, it leads him straight to Alexander, who—and there is no gentler way to say this—is on the verge of losing his shit.

Magnus, half-conscious and vision blurry, gets up long enough to fall down in Alec’s arms.

“What do you know,” he says, as Alec frantically starts wrapping bandages around his wounds. “That rune might be my very favorite of all.”

#

In the end, Wilson doesn’t challenge Maia. That, she could have respected. Instead, he has five wolves ambush her coming out of a pack meeting, then shoots her from behind while thirty feet away.

Clary gets two of the wolves with her sunlight rune, then loses all control when a third attacks Maia, transforming mid-leap and tearing out the wolf’s throat with her teeth. Bat takes down another, while Maia throws the last werewolf into the wall—and that’s when she feels it, the bullet punching into her side.

She turns, reaching for her stele and activating her heightened speed before running straight at Wilson, tackling him to the ground. “You’re already dead, bitch,” he says, struggling underneath her. “Silver nitrate.”

Maia inhales, and her joints snap and snap and snap. Her fur grows long. Her teeth come out.

Her teeth find Wilson’s collarbone and crack it in half.

He screams, writhing on the ground, as Maia transforms back into her human form. She staggers slightly, a hand pressed to her side, but she stays upright because she’ll be damned if he sees her fall.

“You’re already dead, bitch,” Maia says. “Bite of an alpha.”

Wilson scoffs through his agony, trying to get up—but the poison has already started taking effect. “It can’t,” he says, eyes wide. “You’re not a real alpha. You’re not even a real werewolf—"

Maia kicks him in the face, knocking out two teeth. He collapses and stays down.

She staggers again. The wound hurts like hell, but it doesn’t feel any worse than a normal gunshot. Blood, and lots of it, but no inflamed veins, no discoloration. It’s real silver, but . . . it’s not poison. It’s not killing her.

She’s immune, just like Clary.

Maia applies an iratze before grabbing Wilson by the foot and dragging him back to the Jade Wolf, where Clary and Bat stand guard over the co-conspirators, and the rest of the pack stands to the side, watching. “Leave,” Maia tells the traitors. “And don’t ever come back.”

They run.

Maia faces the rest of the pack, naked and bloody and eyes glowing green. “Leave with them, or don’t. Challenge me, or don’t. But attack me from behind like a coward? Try to assassinate me? Your death will be slow, and violent, and without mercy. Do you understand?”

Silently, one by one, they kneel. Some are wary, some are respectful, some are grinning, but they all kneel.

Maia turns to Bat first, tells him good work, before turning to Clary. She’s still in her wolf form, one ear wounded and bloody, but utterly calm, sitting up and watching attentively.

“You’ve more than proven yourself,” Maia tells her. “You’re pack now. You’re mine, and we’re yours. Always.”

Clary blinks once, long and slow, before quickly lying down at Maia’s feet. Maia squats and pets her fur. Clary still seems to like that.

“Bitch,” Wilson says again, weakly, because his vocabulary’s pretty limited. He spits out blood and flecks of teeth. “Abomination. Finish it! Kill me!”

She looks at him.

Luke might have killed Wilson. He’s killed before; it’s how he became their leader, after all. More than likely, though, he’d have saved Wilson, taken him to Magnus to be healed. That’s just the type of alpha he was: merciful, distracted, kind, weak.

That’s not the type of alpha Maia wants to be. She’s more loyal to the pack than Luke was, more dedicated. She’s also more vindictive, and she needs to set an example. Wants to, even.

“I already told you,” Maia says, standing back up. “Cowards don’t get mercy.”

It takes Wilson hours to die, and the pack watches with her the entire time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Simon assumes that Jace is straight and accidentally poses that assumption as a question while talking about something else entirely. Jace, who is secretly bisexual, is compelled to tell Simon that he isn’t straight. Jace is upset, mostly because he’s frustrated with himself; he doesn’t believe he has the right to make his bisexuality a big deal. Magnus assures him that his bisexuality is valid no matter who he’s actually been with.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always deeply appreciated!


	3. a spark behind this door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a humbling realization to discovery that Clary, of all people, has a more reasonable and well-thought out strategy to rescue Magnus, one that doesn’t involve anyone being semi-permanently murdered. The alliance rune is clever, nearly guaranteed to work, and best of all, temporary.
> 
> Well, Alec tries to tell himself later. Two out of three isn’t so bad.
> 
> (In which the alliance rune is unexpectedly permanent, and everyone deals with the fallout. In this chapter, demons attack, someone gets hurt, and Magnus and Alec finally sit down and talk.)

Clary kills Jonathan and spends the next five days as a wolf.

Jace wishes he could’ve done it for her. He wishes he could’ve shouldered that one burden, at least. Clary already has so much on her shoulders: losing her mom, killing her dad—his dad, too, in a way. Jace wanted so badly to step in, to take Jonathan out himself—but Jonathan had grown so powerful, had killed so many. Only Clary could get close enough to stop him. Only Clary could activate her light rune while holding him close, letting it get brighter and brighter until everyone in the vicinity had to close their eyes or go blind. Until Jonathan burned away in her very arms. 

Clary had sobbed until she screamed, and screamed until she howled. She’d been stuck in her wolf form ever since.

She stayed with the pack the first night, the wolves giving whatever weird werewolf solidarity they could offer. Then Jace took her home. Izzy had come by every night, silently lying next to Clary. Maia visited frequently, as did Simon and Luke. Alec and Magnus only dropped in once, but Magnus had spent over an hour with Clary, mostly talking about light-hearted, silly things Clary would enjoy, and Alec had knelt by her and just said, “We’re here when you’re ready,” before scratching behind her ears.

Right now, it’s just Jace, sitting up in bed and reading How To Flirt With A Naked Werewolf out loud to Clary because—angels help him—he’s in an actual book club now with, well, pretty much everyone that’s been visiting the last few days. Jace was drunk when he agreed. He doesn’t know what anyone else’s excuse is. He’s only a few chapters in when a voice at his side startles him. “Izzy picked this, didn’t she?”

He glances over. Clary’s shifted back, obviously, and sliding under the sheets next to him. Her eyes are wet.

“Hey,” he says softly.

“Hey.” 

Her smile wobbles. Jace puts down the book and holds Clary as tears spill down her cheeks.

“I wanted to save him,” Clary whispers.

He kisses her hair. “You did. You did.”

#

Izzy is beyond tired by the time she gets to the shop. She’s been training non-stop with Clary for the past three days: the joining ceremony is only in a few weeks, and they’re determined to be as prepared as possible, especially since they’ll be the first Allied Shadowhunters to attempt it. Jace and Alec’s bond remained intact, but they were full-blooded Nephilim when they made it. Meanwhile, Izzy is part warlock now, and Clary a werewolf. There’s no guarantee the joining will even succeed.

She tries not to worry about it. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work, and Clary is still her best friend. A failed ritual can’t break that. And if it does work, well. Izzy is a little worried about that, too: what if she doesn’t have it in her to be a good parabatai? What if she’s too stubborn, too independent? She never imagined tying her soul to anyone before she met Clary. What if this is a mistake? What if she comes to regret it?

But Izzy believes in living for the joy of today, not the fear of tomorrow, and anyway, she’s excited. Nervous, but excited.

That’s pretty much how she feels about tonight, too.

The bookshop is closed. Izzy lets herself in and finds her mother in the armory; immediately, Mom sweeps over and hugs her. It’s still strange they do this now—Izzy spent years as the black sheep, the disappointment, the one being passed over for Jace’s natural talent and Alec’s impeccable control. Izzy can’t always shake the resentment. She tries, but it stirs up sometimes when she least expects it. _Why couldn’t we have had this before? Why do you only love me now_?

Healing is a slow process. Working together, Izzy thinks, has helped them both. Mom once said that she was just like Izzy when she was young, but Izzy could never see it, not until recently, anyway. It was always little moments, like when Luke dropped by and whispered something that made Mom tip her head back in laughter, or when she verbally eviscerated some rich warlock customer who’d had a few ignorant things to say about Magnus and his runes. There’s always been this invisible wall between Mom and everyone around her, some impenetrable barrier she built years and years ago. It’s like, at some point, she just started sinking into herself, hiding away all the loud and passionate and merciful parts so that no one could see her, hurt her, know her. Izzy thinks it’s only recently that Mom has felt safe enough to let that wall down—or maybe just desperate enough, on the verge of losing all her children, who had never really known her. It makes Izzy sad, thinking of her mother like that. It makes her want to try harder, despite the resentment that won’t quite go away.

It was Izzy’s idea that Mom get a signature weapon. Mom, after all, had been the one to first explain how a weapon should be an extension of yourself, and how you should respect the tools you use to protect your fellow Shadowhunters, your loved ones, to do your duty. The Clave had taken her weapon, along with her runes, but there was no reason she shouldn’t get a new weapon now, like Izzy.

It was Mom’s idea to make Izzy’s new signature, and for Izzy to make hers. 

At this point, Izzy isn’t actually sure if she’s more anxious about giving her mother what she forged, or seeing what weapon Mom made, thinking of her.

Izzy steps back and sets the very large, heavy box on the table. “At first,” she says nervously, as Mom silently looks it over, face unreadable. “I thought I’d make you something elegant, a rapier, maybe, like Magnus’s, only less . . .”

“Ornate?” Mom asks, smiling. The pommel of that sword had taken a very long time to fashion. Subtle, it was not.

“Exactly. But I realized I was thinking of—” Izzy bites back on ‘the old you’ just in time. “A different version of you. I wanted to make a weapon for who I’ve watched you become.”

Mom nods, hands hesitating for just a moment. Then she opens the box, pulling out the silver battle axe inside.

“Oh, Izzy,” she breathes as she tests the weight and looks over the blade, carved with runes for accuracy, abundance, and angelic power. “It’s so beautiful.”

Izzy exhales. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. “You like it? You aren’t disappointed?”

Mom looks at her, eyes shining. “No, Isabelle. Never.”

Reverentially, she sets down her axe, reaches for something behind her, and hands over a gift box. It’s wrapped a lot nicer than Izzy bothered with it; it’s also quite a bit smaller. Izzy can’t even begin to guess. A dagger? A mundane whip to replace the one she’s lost?

No point in guessing. Izzy opens it, and stares at what she finds. “Is this . . .”

“I knew it needed to be a ranged weapon,” Mom says, smoothing her dress, uncharacteristically fidgety. “But nothing so traditional as your brother’s bow. Your weapon needed to be special, unique, just like you. I did some internet research for inspiration, and I came across some awful mundane movie I was certain Simon must have seen. I hope you don’t mind that I consulted him. It was, possibly, cheating.”

The boomerang in her hand is silver and gold, a large throwing star with five curved blades. It’s a near-perfect replica of the glaive from _Krull_ , which she watched with Simon last month, and laughed and laughed. There are differences, of course. Izzy is almost certain her weapon doesn’t light up with cheap 80’s special effects; also, there are runes carved into the blades, too: gift, guidance, destined, fortune, and fortitude.

Izzy knows she should wait until she’s outside—or at least in a larger room—to test it, but patience has never been one of her strong suits; she throws the glaive, and it easily curves around the corner and comes right back to her, like it knows it belongs in her hand.

“It’s all right if you don’t like it,” Mom says. Her dress could not possibly get any smoother. “I can always make you something else, or, if you prefer—”

“Mom,” Izzy says, grinning. “It’s. It’s perfect.”

This isn’t just Mom letting herself be seen. It’s Mom seeing Izzy, really seeing her, for what feels like the first time in years.

Mom hugs her, and this time, Izzy relaxes into it.

#

Family dinners, Luke muses, didn’t use to be quite this complicated.

Growing up, any meals he actually shared with his family were quiet, stilted. His parents, long since gone now, were never particularly invested in either of their children; they weren’t neglectful, exactly, just disengaged. And of course, Luke and Cleophas’s relationship had been complicated even before he became a werewolf and she became a murderer. 

It was Jocelyn and Clary and—often--Simon, who showed Luke what a real family dinner could be like, and he cherishes the memories of those meals. But Jocelyn’s gone now. Luke will feel that hole in his life every single day. No one will ever fill it, not completely.

There are certainly a large group of noisy, dangerous, wonderful people now, though, doing their best to try.

Luke gazes around the loft, bemused, as he sips from a bottle of AB+. The family dynamics in this room are . . . complicated. His daughter is dating Maryse’s son, who was raised, in part, by his old parabatai—who, of course, is also his daughter’s birth father. Simon, Luke’s-like-a-son, is meanwhile dating Maryse’s daughter, who’s about to become Clary’s parabatai. And Jace, who’s obviously going to be Luke’s son-in-law one day, is parabatai to Alec, who’s engaged to Magnus, who invited Raphael, his own like-a-son, to the party—and word is, Raphael used to date Izzy, too. Magnus also invited his centuries-old best friend, Catarina, along with her daughter Madzie, who’s shy around most adults but grins freely at “Uncle Alec” and “Uncle Magnus.” Madzie, currently, is playing with Maryse’s youngest son, who’s come to visit for the weekend. And is that—no, that’s _not_ it, because Clary invited Maia, her alpha, who used to be Luke’s beta, not to mention Simon’s ex-girlfriend.

All Luke’s really saying is that he’s glad he’s not responsible for the seating arrangements.

Everyone mostly seems to be getting along, though. Alec had seemed sick when Luke and Maryse first arrived, pale and obviously exhausted, but he perked up maybe ten minutes later—though whatever was wrong with him, it’s clear that he and Magnus are a little off: not fighting, exactly, but not making a lot of eye contact, either. And both Catarina and Raphael had been noticeably cool with Maryse initially, although Raphael’s animosity, at least, had faded considerably during dinner, probably because he was too busy being enraptured with his food to bother with anything else.

Now Alec and Maia are in a heated debate about . . . Luke doesn’t even know, something to do with . . . space opera? Is that a thing? Maia is adamant that some book called _The Stars Are Legion_ is far superior to some other book, Ancillary . . . Ancillary Something. Alec, meanwhile, is adamant that Maia has lost her mind. Clary, who refuses to take sides, tries to get Luke to join their book club, while Jace, behind her, silently waves his hands and mouths _don’t do it_ and _save yourself_. Izzy’s laughing at him, and at Max, too, who’s rolling his eyes in exasperation as Maryse teases him about the latest thing he’s managed to set on fire in school. Magnus and Catarina are arguing about some party-turned-disaster they went to centuries ago (Catarina maintains it was all Magnus’s fault), while Simon blinks in confusion at the sudden mountain of peas on his plate because he hasn’t yet noticed Madzie, giggling behind her hand, or Raphael whispering mischievously in her ear. It’s still very strange to see Raphael smile. 

All in all, there’s much less drama than Luke would’ve expected, or at least, there is until about ten minutes later, when a small army of Shax and Ravener demons break into Magnus’s loft just as dessert’s being served.

Maryse, unleashing the battle axe she insisted on bringing to show off, kills three of them in under twenty seconds without benefit of runes or supernatural strength. By God, Luke loves her.

Magnus summons his rapier and attacks. Alec joins him, scimitar in hand, while Maia, a few feet away, neatly dodges a demon’s pincers with a roll that Luke saw Clary do just last week. Then Maia gets up, purposefully shifting, and rips out a Ravener demon’s throat.

Simon’s fangs are bloody. Luke’s are, too.

Izzy takes out another two with her glaive, which is—Luke blinks—yes, on fire. It doesn’t seem to hurt her any, as she catches it and immediately throws it again, killing another demon before it can attack Clary. Clary nods her thanks and blasts a demon with her sunlight rune. Her eyes are green, and she’s growling, but she hasn’t lost control of it. Luke is so proud of her, but there’s only time to nod before another wave of demons pour in.

There are so many of them.

Arrows soar everywhere. Fireballs, too. Jace takes a bite to the shoulder while protecting Madzie, who’s busy flinging a demon so hard into a wall that Luke actually hears its skull fracture. Her ferocity doesn’t surprise him; that demon had almost been on top of Alec, who’d lost his scimitar in the fray and had just saved Catarina’s life with a well-placed arrow. Catarina, herself, had just frozen a demon before it could bite Izzy, who’d been killing a demon before it could attack Raphael, who’d almost lost an eye while ignoring his own mortality and pushing Simon out of the way. Around and around, they go, risking themselves to save each other. That’s as good of a definition for family as any Luke’s ever heard.

Max, who Maryse has mostly kept behind her, still manages to stab a demon in the face with a dagger just as Magnus unleashes a wall of blue fire. It takes out the last ten demons, and he sinks to his knees, as everyone, breathing heavily, looks around the room.

“Is that it?” Simon finally asks. “Did we win?”

“Looks like,” Izzy says cheerfully, just as Jace sways. Catarina is there instantly, sitting him down on the now-bloody sofa and healing his shoulder. Alec, apparently assured that both Jace and Magnus are going to be all right, starts retrieving arrows, as Maryse swoops in to check on each of her children. Then, suddenly, she’s in Luke’s arms.

He tries to pull back—he can feel the blood running down his chin, and she doesn’t want to see that, doesn’t need the reminder of what he really is—only for Maryse to push forward and kiss him pretty thoroughly. 

“Gross, mom,” Max says, somewhere in the background, as Luke laughs gently into Maryse’s mouth.

“I thought,” he says, when they eventually stop for breath, “I thought—being a vampire—you didn’t—”

“Oh, you stupid man,” Maryse says, her voice kinder than the words. “We’ll talk tonight—”

Someone screams.

It takes Luke a minute to process what’s happened. Raphael’s on the floor, slightly stunned—he’s been knocked out of the way by something, by Magnus, by—oh, by the angel, Magnus—

He’s on his back, nearly colorless and helplessly clutching at his throat. There’s so much blood coming out of it that Luke and Simon both stumble backwards, overwhelmed by the smell.

Jace, standing now, staggers as Alec screams something incoherent and raises his hands. The demon, who must have been playing possum before clawing open Magnus’s throat, is shaking like nothing Luke’s ever seen before. Like his skeleton is literally rattling inside of him, like—

Like someone’s set off an earthquake in his bones.

The demon crumples apart as Catarina flies forward, and Raphael desperately starts praying in Spanish, and Clary completely loses control. Maia’s barely holding on herself, limbs popping and jerking as she claws frantically into the floor and howls. Luke just barely contains Clary with Isabelle and Simon’s help, as the lights flicker and the air grows thin and the temperature suddenly drops thirty degrees—though whether that’s Alec or Madzie or both, he couldn’t say. Madzie’s in a ball, hands over her ears, as Max tries to hug her. Alec—Alec is openly hysterical, held back by Maryse and Jace, both of whom are crying.

Catarina’s gone blue as she kneels in Magnus’s blood, trying to heal him—but Magnus’s eyes blink slower and slower, mouth moving soundlessly, arms fallen to his sides. Even from here, Luke can tell the wounds—they’re just too deep. He’s seen wounds like that before. There’s no coming back, not from that.

Magnus blinks again, yellow eyes unfocused. His twitching fingers still—

“No,” Catarina says. “Damn it, Magnus. You will _not_.”

The blue light from her fingers glows so brightly that, for a long, blinding moment, that’s all Luke can see.

#

Magnus dreams of doorways, ones he can’t follow Alec through. He keeps trying, and they keep shutting in his face. “Please,” he says, and he’s crying, but that’s why Alec had turned away in the first place, isn’t it? Pathetic tears and monstrous eyes and always, always needing something.

 _Too much_ , Alec had said. _Never enough_.

Magnus collapses outside a door that’s sticky with someone’s blood—oh, it’s his own. “Not again,” he begs, weakly, as blood drips down his neck. “Not now, Alexander, please. You won’t have to see. I’ll find it. I’ll find it.”

There’s a spark behind this door, if only he could get it to open—

 _I should have left you in Edom_ , Alec had said.

Too much. Never enough. Too much. Never enough. Too much, never enough, ENOUGH—

“ _Bane_.”

Magnus wakes up to a truly obnoxious amount of sunlight and the sound of someone’s voice—not Alec, where’s Alec, who—

“If you wouldn’t mind?” the voice says, acidly.

“L—” He coughs, throat dry and burning. “’Enzo?”

All right. That, perhaps, wasn’t his most cutting, quick-witted response—in fact, it was barely intelligible—but perhaps that’s only to be expected, considering the likelihood of what happened to his vocal cords when . . . when . . .

He shudders. It doesn’t matter how many centuries you live: you never get used to choking on your own blood.

“Magnus.” Lorenzo’s voice is gentler now. “Let go. You’re all right.”

Magnus blinks, twice, three times, finally managing to unstick his eyes properly. He’s in bed, and Lorenzo’s leaning over him awkwardly. His wrist is caught tightly in Magnus’s fingers. Hastily, Magnus lets go and pushes himself up. It takes a fair bit more effort than he wants to admit. “Alexander—”

But Alec is lying next to him, asleep and breathing heavily into his pillow. There are no obvious wounds that Magnus can see, but something is clearly wrong: he hasn’t even stirred, Alec, who had once woken up from a dead sleep, seraph blade in hand, because Madzie had quietly sneezed in the other room. “What—”

“He’s fine, only exhausted. From what I can gather, Mr. Lightwood’s been abusing a wakefulness elixir for some time now. After it became clear that you’d survive, the effects simply caught up to him. I’d expect him to sleep for another day or two.”

Magnus touches Alec’s cheek. He looks so young like this, so unburdened. Only the former is true, of course. Alec is young. Magnus only looks it.

Magnus should be dead.

He pulls back, rubs at his own throat, tries not to see Ragnor bleeding out from the very same type of wound. How macabrely poetic it would’ve been if he and Ragnor had died in the exact same fashion: Ragnor in his arms, Magnus in Catarina’s—

He twists back to Lorenzo. “Catarina. Catarina, she must have, is she—”

“She’s fine, Bane. Sleeping in the other room.”

But that assurance isn’t enough for Magnus; such a powerful healing could have killed her, should have killed her. He needs to see her with his own eyes, rolls out of bed and stumbles almost immediately. “Honestly, Bane,” Lorenzo grumbles, but helps Magnus to the guest room.

Catarina is asleep, just like Lorenzo had promised. Breathing normal, pulse steady, skin bright blue and beautiful. She’s a little too cold, though: not worrying, but . . . he doesn’t like it. He sits at the foot of her bed and waves a hand. Six blankets appear.

It’s possible that his magic might be a little anxious.

Lorenzo snorts unattractively and waves his own hand. Four of the blankets vanish. “You see? She’s fine. My assistance wasn’t even required. She merely needs to rest, as, frankly, do I. So, perhaps you could see yourself back to bed where you belong, and I—”

“Thank you.”

Lorenzo blinks, obviously startled. “I told you, I didn’t—"

“You didn’t have to come. Not here, and certainly not to Edom.” 

Magnus has been putting off this conversation for far too long; it’s easier to hate Lorenzo for all the things he didn’t do then to acknowledge the good things that he did. It’s certainly easier to ignore the mistakes Magnus, himself, has made—and he’s made more than a few. 

“You didn’t have to help Alexander with his newfound magic, either,” Magnus says. “I’m grateful. And.” He swallows, and it hurts for more reason than one. “I’m sorry. For what I did, for what I let my father—”

Lorenzo holds up a hand. 

“Perhaps,” Lorenzo says, after a long moment, “I should be the one apologizing. It was my inactions that allowed certain situations to escalate. I was guided by my . . . insecurities, rather than by my duty as High Warlock, and I regret those decisions. Seeing the way your loved ones have rallied around you, both last night and in Edom, the lengths they were willing to go, how fearful they were over your safety, it’s been something of an eye-opener for me. As was seeing you with your father.”

Magnus looks away.

“I never had a family,” Lorenzo says, after a moment’s hesitation. “Never knew my own father at all, and it’s . . . possible that I resented you for that. Not just for the power you inherited, but the interest Asmodeus had shown in you, time and again. It never occurred to me how possessive that love really was, how manipulative. I couldn’t see, until recently, that it wasn’t love at all. But what you have now with Catarina, Mr. Lightwood, and all those other crying people I found here last night—that is what a family should be. I can only hope, one day, I’m lucky enough to find one of my own.”

Lorenzo’s wistful smile tightens as he turns to leave. Magnus stops him, wavering slightly as he stands back up.

“I’d understand,” Magnus says, once he steadies, “if you’re inclined to say no after how last night went, but you and Andrew are welcome to come the next time we have dinner. If that’s something you’d care to do.”

Lorenzo visibly brightens for just a moment; then he quickly scowls and crosses his arms. “Bane,” he says skeptically, “we’re not going to keep being nice to one another, are we?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Magnus says. He doesn’t bother to hide his grin.

#

 _Alec? Alexander_?

He hums, stretches. Reaches out.

Warm fingers press around his own. There’s a soft, familiar voice in his ear. “There you are.”

“Mm. There you are,” Alec murmurs back, slow and sleepy—before scrabbling upward in bed, blinking frantically at Magnus’s face, reaching for the smooth line of his throat. “You’re okay. You’re really okay.”

“You’re behind the times,” Magnus says airily. His face is hard to read. “I slept for 12 hours. You slept for 48. Even Catarina woke up before you did.”

Alec vaguely remembers Catarina passing out over Magnus, remembers somebody calling Lorenzo, while Raphael and Luke argued about how this could’ve happened, and a very pale Jace all but dragged Alec over to the bed. _He’s okay now, that’s it; lay down for a minute, buddy. Close your eyes, okay_? 

After that—nothing.

Alec scrubs at his face. “Catarina—”

“Good as new,” Magnus says. “She’s gone to collect Madzie before Raphael can feed her any more sugar. You wouldn’t believe the sweet tooth he’s managed to develop since becoming human again. At least I know what to get him for Christmas this year.”

Alec stomach grumbles at the mere mention of food. Magnus is on his feet before Alec can even blink. 

“Of course,” he says. “Of course, you’ll need to eat.”

“Magnus—"

But Magnus whisks out of the room.

Alec rubs his face again. He means to follow Magnus, but the second he stands up, he realizes he needs to get to the bathroom. Now. Or yesterday, if possible.

After peeing for what feels like years, Alec washes his hands and walks to the kitchen. Platters of waffles and pancakes and crepes appear and disappear so fast, Alec can barely keep track of them. “No, I think,” Magnus says, and a cup of coffee is replaced by a glass of juice, which vanishes almost immediately in favor of a taller glass of juice with what’s certainly a higher alcohol content. 

“Hey,” Alec says, catching Magnus’s wrist. “Anything’s fine.”

Magnus laughs. It’s not a happy sound. “Of course. Everything’s always fine.”

Oh. He’s angry.

How Alec managed to piss Magnus off while he was asleep, he doesn’t know, but he needs to fix it. He needs to fix whatever’s gone wrong between them since coming back from Edom because Magnus, he almost died. He almost died _again_ , and Alec can’t handle it. He’s supposed to go first; he knows that, has long since accepted it, and time—time is never on Alec’s side. He only gets so much of it. Why are they wasting what they have?

“We could do something disgustingly hearty,” Magnus muses. “Perhaps a traditional English breakfast? Or—”

“Why are we waiting to get married?” Alec asks.

Magnus blinks at him.

“I don’t want to wait anymore,” Alec says, pressing on even though he still can’t read Magnus’s face at all. “Unless . . . you’re having second thoughts?”

The storm living inside his chest trembles. He clenches his fists, willing it to calm down.

Magnus’s golden eyes widen. “Alexander . . . how could you even think . . .”

“You won’t talk to me,” Alec says. He tries to keep the frustration out of his voice, but he can tell it’s bleeding through from the way Magnus tightly crosses his arms. “I keep asking, and you keep saying you’re fine, and . . . Magnus, I thought we were past all that.”

Magnus laughs again. “Past what? We never dealt with anything.”

“Magnus—”

“Besides, you’re the one who’s been pulling away. You won’t talk to me, not about your runes, not about your magic. You barely spend time here anymore. You certainly never sleep here. Apparently, you don’t sleep at all—”

“I sleep—”

“Two days, Alexander! Even the best stamina potions can’t be used indefinitely—and I don’t suppose you’ve been drinking top shelf, have you? Of course, what else could be expected? You’re only a novice, after all. It’s not like you’re living with one of the strongest warlocks in the country to offer advice. Not like my excellent potion work is _something I’m known for_.”

A pitcher of syrup explodes. 

Alec raises his eyebrows. “You done?”

“Too much?” Magnus asks, and Alec doesn’t know what to do with the sheer bitterness in his voice.

“You’ve never been too much,” Alec finally says. “Not for me.”

Magnus looks at him, mouth parting—but nothing comes out. His shoulders slump.

Cautiously, Alec steps forward. “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to share my magic with you. But I’m not always in control. With you, Magnus, I feel so much whenever I’m with you, and my magic, it . . . it . . . here.” He grabs Magnus’s hand and places his palm on Alec’s chest. “You can feel it, right?”

“I don’t—oh,” Magnus says. Then he does the last thing Alec is expecting and _smiles_ , in awe or wonder. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

Alec, relieved, smiles back at him. “I just wanted to protect you,” he says.

Apparently, it’s the wrong thing to say.

Magnus pulls back, eyebrows raised, lips curling. “Oh, wonderful. Just what I always wanted. More of your protection.”

“Magnus—”

“Has it ever occurred to you that—as an 800-year-old warlock—just perhaps, I don’t need your protection? Has it ever once occurred to you to ask what I want, rather than decide what I need?”

“But I do ask you,” Alec says, frustrated. For just a moment—but Magnus always pulls back. He’ll put his life in Alec’s hands, but not his heart, and it shouldn’t hurt so much, but it does. “I ask all the time, and you never tell me the truth.”

Magnus rolls his eyes and turns, snapping his fingers. There’s a drink suddenly in his hand, like it’s a shield he needs. Like he can’t talk to Alec if he’s entirely sober.

The way he’d sobbed into Alec’s shoulder, the way he’d smiled and suppressed and then completely fell apart . . .

Alec shakes his head. “It’s always ‘don’t worry, Alexander; I’m fine, Alexander,’ but you weren’t fine then, and you’re not fine now.”

“No,” Magnus snaps. “I wasn’t, and I told you, and you _left_.”

It’s hard to breathe suddenly. The storm inside his chest has gone cold, turned to ice. “You know,” Alec whispers. “You know I didn’t want to. It was the hardest thing I’d ever—but you were so unhappy. I only wanted to help.”

Magnus lifts his chin. “Funny how you keep trying that,” he says, “and keep hurting me instead.”

Alec inhales and turns away. The ice is spreading down his arms, through his fingers. He closes his eyes, but it doesn’t help—the wind shudders through him, knocks chairs over, not to mention all the forgotten breakfast food off the counter. 

It’s snowing, he realizes, and he can’t make it stop.

“Alec—”

“Don’t,” Alec says, without opening his eyes. “Don’t come any closer.”

Magnus ignores him. Alec can hear his footsteps crunch in the snow. He feels Magnus’s arms wrap around him from behind, and Alec shouldn’t lean back into them; he shouldn’t, he’s so cold, too cold. It’ll hurt Magnus; _he’ll_ hurt Magnus, again and again and again— 

But Magnus’s arms are so warm. 

“It’s all right,” Magnus murmurs. “You’re all right. I’ve got you.”

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“You’ve moved on before. You’d do it again, I knew you would, but without your magic—I couldn’t be the reason. You didn’t need me like you needed your—”

“You have no idea,” Magnus interrupts, “how much I need you.”

Alec shivers. “Magnus—”

“It’s my own fault,” Magnus says softly. “If only I could’ve been honest from the start, about what my magic meant to me, what you meant to me, the pain that I was going through. But . . . it’s so hard, Alexander. You have no idea how many people won’t, can’t—and not just lovers, but friends, allies. My mother. I’m a lot to handle, a lot to put up with—"

Alec shakes his head. “That’s not—”

“Always too much of one thing,” Magnus insists. “Never enough of another. Too much drama, self-pity. Not enough use. Not enough spark.”

“No,” Alec says firmly. “No, that part, that part was the lie. You never lost that spark, and even if you had—I wouldn’t leave you for it. I’d help you find it again.”

Magnus inhales sharply. “Oh, Alexander,” he says, and his arms tighten, thawing Alec out.

The wind dies down. Alec opens his eyes, finally, but doesn’t turn around. There's a good six inches of snow now at his feet.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he says. “I don’t want to keep hurting you. Tell me what I can do.”

Magnus thinks about it. “Promise me.”

“Anything.”

“Stop protecting me.”

Alec hesitates. He doesn’t know how to do that. How else do you love someone?

Magnus huffs. “I’m not suggesting you refrain from shooting something that’s about to kill me, Alexander. I just want you to stop leaving me in order to protect me. I don’t need your protection. I need you to stay.”

“Magnus . . .” Alec helplessly waves his hand at the snow. “I’m scared of this. I’m scared of me.”

“I know,” Magnus says gently. “So, let me help. Please let me help.”

Alec takes a breath, long and slow. The storm has calmed, but his mark hasn’t faded yet: he can feel that, even if he can’t see it.

If he wants Magnus to let him in, he needs to be honest, too.

“Can I show you something?”

Magnus stills. He knows what Alec means. “Of course. Only if you’re ready.”

“It’s not like yours. It’s—you might not like it.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

Alec takes another breath, lets it out, and turns around in Magnus’s arms. Magnus’s eyes widen.

Alec’s warlock mark is similar to Lorenzo’s, of course: gold spotting, vaguely reptilian, but there’s no texture to it, no actual scale. And where Lorenzo’s mark appears mostly on his arms and hands, Alec’s run down the sides of his face, into his neckline, down his chest. Simon, he’s embarrassed to say, is one of the few people who has actually seen his mark, albeit accidentally. _Dude_ he’d said. _You’re Trill now! That’s awesome_! Alec had no idea what that meant, but he’d handled it the way he usually handles Simon: by glaring at him until he ran away.

“May I?” Magnus asks now.

Alec shrugs.

Magnus reaches out, brushing his thumb against the spots, and then smiles widely, cupping Alec’s face with both hands. “They’re beautiful,” he says. “You’re beautiful.”

Alec laughs, a little embarrassed. “You mean that?”

“Always,” Magnus says—and then hesitates, smile dimming. “Do you not trust my word?”

Does he?

“I want to,” Alec tells him. “I do, just—”

“I don’t always tell you the truth,” Magnus says. He frowns deeply, eyes moving back and forth, before he finally looks at Alec again. “I want you to trust me. When I say you’re beautiful, I want you to know it’s true. What can I do?”

Alec doesn’t have to think about it.

“Just be honest with me,” he says, squeezing Magnus’s hands. “I know it’s not easy. I know it’ll take time. But when you’re sad or scared or anything, just tell me. Don’t push me away.”

Magnus pulls him in. “Shall I tell you something now?”

Alec smiles. “Hit me.”

“I don’t want to wait, either,” Magnus whispers. “I want to get married. Today.”

“Today?” Alec laughs and kisses him. “Okay. Okay, let’s do it.”

#

The wedding goes off without a hitch.

It’s beautiful, not that Jace would have expected anything less from Magnus Bane: warlock, groom, and—apparently—master wedding planner. The only thing that does surprise Jace is Magnus actually agreeing to get married at the Institute.

Magnus had shook his head, grinning. “Your parabatai,” he’d said, shortly before the ceremony. “He simply can’t stop blowing up the ground he stands on.”

“Is that a good thing?” Jace had asked skeptically.

“It’s a very good thing. It’s who your brother is.”

Well. Jace can’t argue with that.

The Clave tried to forbid it, of course—you’ve gone too far this time, a whole “we put you in power and we can just as easily take that power away again” sort of thing—but they shut up pretty fast as soon as Izzy, smiling dangerously, hand-delivered proof that the attack on the Lightwood-Bane-Fairchild-Too-Many-Other-Damn-Names dinner had been secretly ordered by two Council members. 

Alec hadn’t even looked surprised.

“We can make this public,” he’d said, voice like stone, “and loudly ask a lot of uncomfortable questions, or you can give me what I want and deal with this traitor quietly. It’s your call.”

Suddenly, the Clave was more than happy to allow the wedding.

Throughout the ceremony, Jace could feel Alec’s nerves like electric wires running down his own body—but it’s the good kind of nervous: anticipation, happiness, more love than he knows what to do with. Alec holds his breath as the wedded union runes are applied; so does Jace and, he’s pretty sure, Magnus, too—but there are no complications. The runes hold, everyone cheers, and Alec and Magnus kiss for definitely longer than is socially acceptable.

At the reception, Jace finds himself wandering over to Maryse.

She’s eating a piece of cake and smiling widely as she watches everyone dance: Alec and Magnus, Izzy and Max, Luke and Clary, Lorenzo and Underhill, Aline and Helen. Simon is doing something that vaguely approximates dancing with Maia and Meliorn; they’re both mostly just laughing at him, but they’re vaguely swaying while doing it.

“Oh, Jace,” Maryse says, beckoning him over. “Have you had any of this cake? It’s amazing.”

“Yeah,” Jace says, laughing a little. The cake was fine. He’s never really been a sweets guy.

He watches Clary laugh at whatever Luke’s said, swatting him lightly on the arm. Fatherly advice, he assumes. Presumably something healthier than “obedience is to be rewarded, love means a broken neck.” She says something back; he’s not sure what. Dad, something, something.

“Jace,” Maryse says, touching his arm. “What’s—”

She cuts herself off abruptly. “If there’s anything you need to talk about,” she says instead, carefully. “I’m always here.”

Jace looks at her. “There is.”

He’s not quite ready to tell her about the thing yet, the, the bisexuality thing. He hasn’t quite got himself to say it out loud—it still feels like he’s making a big deal over nothing—although he did tell both Alec and Clary, more or less. Alec hugged him, long and silent, and then allowed him to change the subject without any questions, while Clary had burst into tears. _Is that all? Oh crap, that’s not—I’m so glad you told me, Jace. Thank you. I love you so much. It’s just, you said you wanted to talk, and you looked so miserable, I thought, I thought maybe you were sick or something, or, or, you wanted to_ —

He’d told her _of course_ he didn’t want to break up. She’d taken off her shirt and told him to prove it.

It could’ve gone worse, is what Jace is saying.

But Jace isn’t sure he’s ready to tell anyone else yet. Maryse would handle it okay, probably. She’s here, isn’t she? She’d be okay with . . . this. Still, he thinks he needs more time before he tells anyone else, if he tells anyone else. He hasn’t decided yet. He doesn’t need to right now.

But what he actually wants to tell Maryse . . . this is something he does need to say, something else that probably shouldn’t matter, but . . .

It does. It just does.

“When you took me in,” Jace says finally, “I never wanted to change my last name. It was all I had of my dad, and I didn’t want to lose it.”

“Of course,” Maryse says, frowning a little. “We always understood that. Are you—”

“And then,” Jace says, pushing forward, “I found out he’d been Valentine all along. And I figured, okay, you’re Jace Morgenstern now. I thought there was something dark inside me, something just like him—”

“Never,” Maryse says fervently, abandoning her cake so she can take his hands. “Even if he had been your biological father, Jace. You’re nothing like Valentine. You never were.”

He smiles. “Yeah, well. It was still a relief when I found out I was a Herondale. Except . . . Stephen and Celine were dead. And Imogen . . .”

Maryse squeezes his hands harder. “That wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”

“Sometimes,” he says.

She opens her mouth, but he cuts her off again. “Imogen was kind to me,” he says. “I’m grateful, and I’m so sorry for what I . . . but I never felt like she was my family. Alec’s my family. Izzy, Max. You. I’ve been changing last names faster than Magnus buys clothes, but my real family’s been here for years. So, I was thinking. Maybe I could change my name one last time?”

“Jace. You mean—”

He shrugs uncomfortably. “If you’re okay with—”

Maryse throws herself forward before he can even finish, hugging him so hard it actually hurts a little. He laughs, trying not to completely melt with relief. “I take it that’s a yes?”

“My darling,” Maryse says. “Of course. Of course, it’s a yes.”

#

Clary’s pacing in her room before the ceremony. Today is the day, today is actually the day, and yep, she is definitely freaking out right now. What if it doesn’t work? What if it does work? Is Izzy this nervous? No, because Izzy’s never nervous: Izzy is confident; Izzy knows what she wants. It’s Clary who’s the train wreck of poor impulse control and indecision here. Why does Izzy even want to be Clary’s parabatai, anyway? What if—

There’s a knock on the door.

“Izzy!” Clary says when she opens it. “Aren’t—are we supposed to see each other before—”

Izzy laughs. “We aren’t getting married.”

No, Clary supposes not. This is something more intimate. More metaphysical. This is something else entirely.

Izzy’s carrying a box. Clary’s about to ask about it when Izzy brushes past, eyes widening. “Oh my God, Clary, is that—”

Oh. No.

“You weren’t supposed to see that yet!” Clary says, like that will change anything now. Izzy is already staring at the mostly-finished painting on the easel: it’s Clary with her green eyes and Izzy with her gold ones, occupying the same headspace, literally, joined together in unity. Clary isn’t sure if Izzy has seen Farscape yet, but it doesn’t seem to matter: the smile on her face is breathtaking.

“You like it?” Clary asks, because she can admit to sometimes being insecure and needy about her artwork.

“I love it,” Izzy says. “It’s so beautiful, Clary.”

“Thanks,” Clary says. “It’s not done yet, but I think it’s coming together, if I could just get—”

“Okay, stop being ridiculous, accept that your art is gorgeous, and open this.”

Clary is suddenly holding the box. “But I didn’t—you didn’t tell me there were gifts! I mean, I thought I’d see if you liked the painting, after the—but you didn’t—"

“Clary. Just open it.”

Clary does and stares. “Izzy. Izzy, I can’t—”

“You’re the only one,” Izzy says. “You’re the only person I can . . . I need you to have it, please.”

Clary takes out the bracelet. It responds to her touch immediately, becoming a whip, wild and free in her hands, before shifting back into a bracelet again. Clary slides it over her wrist. “Izzy, I don’t even know what to say.”

Izzy smiles, eyes wet. “It looks good on you,” she says, and Clary agrees. It does look good, but not because it’s hers. The whip will always be Izzy’s.

She’s just carrying it for a while.

Clary exhales, and suddenly feels settled. “I think I’m ready,” she says.

Izzy grins.

They walk to the ceremony together. Everyone is there with them, watching, from beyond the ring of blue flame: Jace, Simon, Maia. Luke and Maryse. Magnus and Alec. A few of Clary’s pack members. Izzy’s little brother and her dad. Even Meliorn and Lorenzo have come, the whole Allied 10. It feels fitting, somehow.

She never expected her life to turn out like this, but she wouldn’t change it, not for anything.

Clary grips Izzy’s arm, as Izzy grips hers.

“Entreat me not to leave thee,” Clary says, “or to return from following after thee—"

“For wither thou goest,” Izzy says. “I will go. And where thou lodgest, I will lodge—"

“Thy people will be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried—"

“The Angel do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me—”

The parabatai rune is placed first on Izzy’s skin, then her own. Clary gasps as a whole other world seems to open up inside her. As a thump-thump-thump she doesn’t recognize slows down, while the knocking of her own heart speeds up to match. Until Clary can feel Izzy’s fire-magic underneath her own skin. 

It’s the most terrifying, most beautiful feeling.

 _No_ , Clary thinks, as she and Izzy stare at one another, barely hearing everyone’s cheers from beyond the flames. _No, I wouldn’t trade the Shadow World for anything. Not a single thing_.

#

Ever since the parabatai ceremony, Izzy has been feeling . . . off.

Before this year, Izzy had never wanted a parabatai, never thought she needed one. Tying her soul to any one person like that . . . it seemed like imprisonment, a leash. At best, a liability. Of course, Alec and Jace had showed her that the bond could be more than that, something truly beautiful—but it still wasn’t something she wanted for herself. Not until she met Clary.

During the ceremony, she’d felt so right. Scared out of her mind, obviously, but content, like she wasn’t attaching herself to somebody else’s soul but reconnecting with the part of hers that had always been missing. She still feels like that, mostly.

But something’s changed in the last week. Izzy knew there would be unexpected sensations, feelings she didn’t recognize and wasn’t prepared for: irritation, when she’d been happy only moments ago, fatigue, when she’d done nothing exhausting. She’d find Clary, or Clary would find her, and there would always be an explanation.

But this . . . this sick feeling that comes and goes . . . she doesn’t know how to explain it. She feels . . . wrong. Dizzy, off-balance. Her stomach flips for no reason. And while it usually resolves quickly enough, she doesn’t know what’s causing it, because whenever she finds Clary, Clary doesn’t seem sick at all. Worse, Clary hasn’t once mentioned any queasiness or food poisoning or anything to explain this. Is she hiding something? Or is it a one-sided problem? Is Izzy's magic reacting poorly to the parabatai rune? Is her body rejecting it entirely? Is this something else the alliance rune won’t let her have?

Izzy tries asking Alec about it, then Jace, but she’s afraid to give them too many details, which of course means they don’t know how to help.

“Don’t worry, Iz,” Jace tells her, right before he and Simon head out on mission. “It takes a while to adjust. Whatever you’re feeling, I’m sure it’s normal.”

They’re still gone the next morning when Izzy wakes up, feeling worse than ever. She’s barely out of bed before Clary barges in and makes a beeline for her bathroom.

“Clary,” Izzy says, following her. “Clary, are you—”

Clary appears to be throwing up everything she’s ever eaten into the toilet. Izzy rubs her back until she finally stops gagging and flushes.

“Izzy,” Clary says, eyes huge. “Izzy, I think I’m pregnant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve never read How to Flirt With A Naked Werewolf and picked it solely because of its fun title. I have read The Stars Are Legion and Ancillary Justice, however, and they’re both excellent. Also, as some reference points: [the glaive from Krull](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+glaive+krull&client=safari&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT38q70KfkAhWVtp4KHfbKBRsQ_AUIESgB&biw=1341&bih=754#imgrc=F8dU2PWhT2b42M:) and [sharing unity in Farscape](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&biw=1341&bih=754&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=TYhnXe29JpXk-gTsx4qQAw&q=farscape+unity&oq=farscape+unity&gs_l=img.3..0i24.71402.73175..73691...0.0..0.103.1195.13j1......0....1..gws-wiz-img.......0j0i67j0i8i30.91zo8CkAMDc&ved=0ahUKEwitmMq80KfkAhUVsp4KHeyjAjIQ4dUDCAY&uact=5#imgrc=dS1eLTtFMTAgdM:)
> 
> One more chapter to go! It’s an epilogue, of sorts. Prepare yourself for some time jumps.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always deeply appreciated!


	4. how else do you love someone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a humbling realization to discovery that Clary, of all people, has a more reasonable and well-thought out strategy to rescue Magnus, one that doesn’t involve anyone being semi-permanently murdered. The alliance rune is clever, nearly guaranteed to work, and best of all, temporary.
> 
> Well, Alec tries to tell himself later. Two out of three isn’t so bad.
> 
> (In which the alliance rune is unexpectedly permanent, and everyone deals with the fallout.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! Your epilogue is finally here, complete with time jumps, immortality angst, mortality angst, and hopeful endings!

Clary doesn’t often get stuck in her wolf form anymore, not like she did during her pregnancy. By the angel, that was a nightmare: Jace worried constantly about what all that shifting was doing to her and the baby—and never mind their suite, which always looked like a horde of ravener demons had just ransacked it. The doctors, Izzy, Catarina, they’d all assured Jace that both Clary and the baby were fine . . . but still, he’d panic and run around and try to gently soothe her back into humanity. 

Unfortunately, the hard truth is that while falling in love has made him a better person, it definitely hasn’t made him any gentler. Once, when Clary had been so frustrated with her swollen feet that she’d shifted mid-rant, Jace had given her a blanket and said, “Uh, feel better?” Until that day, he hadn’t known wolves could make facial expressions that said _Jace, you’re an idiot_ , but turned out, they could.

Now, Clary probably only gets stuck two or three times a year, and he’s a lot calmer about the whole thing. He just lies down on the massive couch that Magnus had summoned for them--one of a dozen ludicrous baby shower gifts—and takes a nap, with a sleeping Josie on his stomach and Wolf Clary at his side.

If anyone asked, he’d have to tell them that, secretly, he finds this whole routine oddly soothing. So, it’s good no one ever asks.

Jace only dozes off for twenty minutes or so, but by the time he wakes up, Clary’s back to her human self, smiling up at him. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “You okay?”

She nods. “Just a bad morning. One of those Berlin Institute guys said something about Josie, and . . .”

“You didn’t bite him, did you?”

“No,” Clary says, with obvious regret.

“Good. Which one was it? I need to know who to stab.”

She laughs and pointedly does not tell him. Alec has made incredible progress as the head of the New York Institute, improving cultural relations and shifting the entire political landscape of the Shadow World—but there are always going to be people determined to have their heads up their asses, and, apparently, one of those people comes from the Berlin Institute. Jace could definitely ask around and find out who this bigoted jackass is.

But it’s hard to stay angry when looking at his daughter—his _daughter_ , he thinks, still slightly bewildered, even though he’s had six months of spit-up and changing diapers and no sleep to get used to the idea. Josie has her mother’s hair, her mother’s nose, her mother’s eyes, but her tiny, pointed ears are all from Jace.

They don’t know if she’ll shift, if she’ll be able to lie, if she’ll have any special runic abilities. So far, her only words are “mama,” “dada,” and “woof.” She giggles all the time. 

Jace loves her so damn much.

“Crap,” Clary says, and he turns his head. She’s plucked out a single, white hair and is pouting at it ferociously.

“Uh. Aren’t you a little young for that?”

“Shut up.” Clary throws the strand away. “My mom once told me she got her first white hair at 20, but come on!”

“It’s okay,” Jace tells her, grinning. “I’ll love you when you’re old and gray, even if that’s only in five years.”

“Shut up,” Clary says again, smacking his shoulder and laughing. 

In her sleep, Josie laughs too.

#

It’s years before they realize that not everyone in the Allied 10 is aging as they should. 

Years before they realize some are aging who shouldn’t.

#

Lorenzo isn’t sure how he finds himself in Magnus’s loft, silently drinking cocktails, but here he is, anyway. The cocktails are acceptable. Magnus, of course, has his own recipe for an old-fashioned, and while it’s not as good as Lorenzo’s, it’s not absolutely terrible.

He sips it and feels, for perhaps the first time in decades, at a complete loss for words.

“I’m so sorry, Lorenzo,” Magnus says. “I know how frightening this is.”

The biting retort on his tongue dies before it gets past his teeth. Magnus Bane might be his once arch-rival; he might be an insufferably charming know-it-all, born with a demonic silver spoon in his mouth and an excessive love of eyeliner, but he’s also probably the one person in the world right now who _does_ know how Lorenzo’s feeling. The mortals who he’s come to surround himself with are sympathetic, but have no concept of the loss. The immortals, at least, are appropriately horrified, but also edge around him like his newfound mortality might be contagious. Lorenzo has entertained several petty daydreams in this last week of banishing everyone he comes across to some unfortunate realm of Hell. Duduael, he hears, is nice this time of year.

Perhaps, then, he’ll be able to keep his position as High Warlock. Already, there’s been talking of voting in a new one, rather than waiting the few decades until Lorenzo is too old and feeble to do the job himself. Until he is bone and ash, and the world continues on without him.

Lorenzo means to give thanks for his slightly inferior cocktail and leave, preferably before their conversation can become too kind or sentimental; instead, he finds himself telling Magnus about the likelihood of his imminent removal from office. He’s not sure why he does it; some uncharacteristic surge of masochism, perhaps, looking to hear smug vindication in Magnus’s voice. It wouldn’t be entirely unwarranted, after all.

Instead, Magnus says, “Nonsense. There’s so much left you for you to accomplish. They’d be fools to vote you out. Of course, warlocks are regularly foolish, but I’m sure you’ll manage to charm them back, just like always. And if you need assistance—oh! I can be your campaign manager. You’ll find I come up with excellent slogans.

Lorenzo stares at him.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he says finally, setting his glass down. “I’m surprised to hear you’re not interested in the job yourself.”

Magnus shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Perhaps one day, I’d like to be High Warlock again, but not quite yet, and not of Brooklyn. Besides, I’d rather earn the position on my own merits, not snake it out from under you.”

Lorenzo smiles tightly, drawing back.

Magnus winces. “That was not meant as a rebuke,” he says gently, turning to make them more drinks. “You’ve done a wonderful job as High Warlock, far better than I would’ve given you credit for, once upon a time. If you wish to continue, then, of course, I’ll use all my power to help you. It _is_ what you want, isn’t it?”

It is. It’s what Lorenzo’s always wanted. He’d planned to have the position for more than a few measly decades . . . but if that’s the time he has left, then that’s how he wants to spend it: leading the local warlock community, making it stronger, keeping it safe. 

It’s just . . . there are so many other things he wants to do, too, things he’d always assumed he’d have time for, someday.

Magnus is more perceptive than Lorenzo wants to admit. “If it’s one thing I’ve learned,” he says, handing Lorenzo his cocktail, “it’s that it doesn’t matter if you live a scant few years or tens of centuries—there will always be things left undone. The world is constantly evolving, and when we leave it, we’ll always leave unfinished. Even with magic, it’s simply impossible to do everything. So, if you’ll permit advice from someone a great deal wiser than me: slow down. Take your time, even when it’s difficult to do, because you’ll miss out on moments if you’re merely chasing after the next one, and it’s important to enjoy what you have, who you have, when you have it. And if you ever need to talk, you know where I’ll be.”

Painfully, Lorenzo swallows. He absolutely refuses to cry in front of Magnus Bane; some dignity, however little, must be maintained. “I expect that’s something your husband told you,” he says as sarcastically as possible, and when Magnus only beams, Lorenzo shakes his head. “You are the most ridiculously dewy-eyed warlock I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet. It makes me sick.”

“You,” Magnus says, unruffled, “are absolutely no better. ‘Andrew said’ and ‘Andrew likes’ and ‘Oh, did you hear what Andrew did’—”

“You’re a menace, Bane,” Lorenzo says, and hides his smile behind his drink.

He leaves perhaps an hour later, returning home and looking up at the painting he commissioned from Clary Fairchild-Lightwood. She’s really quite talented, he’s discovered, capturing his likeness with surprising accuracy: he looks quite impressive, of course, with his seraph blade in hand—but it’s Andrew who really stands out in the portrait, perhaps because of his kind eyes and smile, or perhaps simply because Lorenzo is, for once, not alone.

He never thought he’d grow old with anyone before. There are, he supposes, worse fates.

Andrew arrives home from the Institute only a few minutes later and wraps his arms around Lorenzo. “What do you want to do tonight?”

Lorenzo considers. There are multiple options, of course, any number of places he’s never gone, things he’s never seen. They could start right now, tonight, giving chase after each and every one—

But it sounds exhausting, and Lorenzo wants to enjoy the time he has left.

So instead he says, honestly, “Anything. Anything with you.”

#

Emotionally, it’s been an exhausting few days.

Clary talks to Izzy first, partially because Jace isn’t ready yet, and partially because her emotions keep bouncing off Izzy’s, a confusing, chaotic jumble of shock and wonder and grief. They can’t postpone the conversation any longer; their bond simply won’t let them.

Clary is mortal. And Izzy isn’t, not anymore.

“Do you regret it?” Clary asks, as they sit down in Izzy's bedroom, not quite looking at one another. “If you’d . . . if you’d have known, would you still have wanted . . .”

Izzy grabs her hand. “You’re my parabatai. Forever. I’ll never regret that.”

Clary nods, relieved beyond measure, and laughs a little as she wipes her cheeks.

“It’s just.” Izzy takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how to lose you.”

Clary thinks of her mom. She thinks of Jonathan, too, the brother she could never save. “I don’t think anyone knows that,” she says. “You just . . . lose people, and you keep going somehow. You push through it with the help of whoever you have left.”

That’s a small comfort, she knows, but it’s all she has to offer. And it’s something Clary is grateful for, knowing that when she’s gone, Izzy will still have people at her side. She’ll lose, she’ll lose so much, but not everyone. 

It matters.

“You can name something after me,” Clary suggests, lightly elbowing Izzy. “200 years from now, when you make your latest genius discovery—”

Izzy’s eyes light up. “Like a new demonic pathogen?”

Clary makes a face. “I was thinking a new rune or a magical weapon, or something. You can call it ‘the Clary,’ and the whole Shadow World will have something to remember me by.”

“I’m pretty sure the history books won’t forget you,” Izzy says wryly. “Anyway, those books won’t be written for a long time.”

No, probably not. Hopefully not, anyway. But they both know time speeds up whenever you’re not looking. One day, she’ll be here, healthy and young, and the next . . .

But Izzy already knows all that. It’s not what she needs to hear right now.

“You're stuck with me for a while,” Clary says, and rests her head on Izzy’s shoulder.

They spend the rest of the night together, crying a little, but mostly laughing. Izzy’s always been good about living in the present. She’s doing okay, right now. It’s Jace who Clary’s really worried about, who straight-up refuses to address her mortality. She says his name, and he turns away, gruffly changing the subject. Somedays, it seems like he’s reverting into the Jace she first met, the one who insisted emotions were a weakness. He can’t lie and say he’s fine, so instead, he just doesn’t talk.

It goes like that for two weeks; then Josie, playing with her food instead of eating it, abruptly asks why Daddy’s sad one night, and Jace starts crying right at the dinner table.

He leaves before Clary can reach him and doesn’t come back for hours, long after she’s put Josie to bed. She doesn’t mean to fall asleep, herself, but she’s been so tired; being a mom and a werewolf and a Shadowhunter is exhausting enough, without all this, too. She wakes up hours later at Josie’s side and finds Jace in the doorway, watching them.

“Hey,” she says softly, and gets up.

Jace won’t leave the doorway. His eyes are trained on Josie. “Shadowhunters lose people,” he says. “Our life expectancies aren’t high. I thought I was prepared for that, but you, Clary . . .”

“Hey,” Clary says, taking him by the chin. “You’re not losing me, not for a long time.”

“I will, though.”

Clary nods. “Probably.”

It could go the other way, of course. Shadowhunter life expectancies _aren’t_ high, and Jace could get killed on mission. He could die saving the world. He could die like her mom did, in an invasion against the Institute. Jace could always go first.

But if he doesn’t, then she will. Because she’ll get weak. She’ll get sick. She’ll get old, eventually. And those things will happen to him, too—but not for a very, very long time. Seelies can live for centuries before death finally catches up. 

Jace and Izzy are leaving Clary behind, or she’s leaving them. It depends on how you look at it, she supposes.

“How’s Meliorn?” she asks. “I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He’s good. Seems happy at the Clave. I think he actually likes all the politics.” Jace shudders. “No signs of aging, either.”

“That’s great,” Clary says. She and Meliorn have never been close, but she knows he struggled the first few years after the alliance rune. She’s glad this wasn’t one more thing taken away from him. “He’s still coming to family dinner next month, right?”

Jace nods. “Said he’ll be there.”

His eyes drift back to Josie.

She squeezes his hand. Waits. 

“You think . . .”

Clary sighs. “I don’t know.”

“I won’t make it,” Jace says. “Not if I lose you both. Clary, if she isn’t . . . how will I . . .”

She wishes she knew the answer to that.

“You just love her,” Clary says. “Hard as you can, for as long as you get. That’s all we can do.”

She pulls him into their daughter's bedroom and they lie down, Josie sleeping between them. She’s theirs, and she’s so beautiful. Clary never knew she could have something so beautiful.

“We’ll be okay,” Clary tells him, and means it.

Jace can’t say it back yet. But eventually, she knows, he will.

#

Maia’s an Alpha, a university graduate, and—soon—a businesswoman: she’s in the process of reopening the Jade Wolf as a restaurant because she believes in the unifying power of food, and, also, it sounded easier to clean than a strip club.

Something else she is: a damn good bartender. Naturally, she begins throwing semi-regular Mortals Club Nights for the “will someday bite it” members of the Allied 10. Lorenzo and Luke can’t make the first one—Luke’s away on mission, while Lorenzo is on vacation with Underhill in Spain—so it’s just Maia, Clary, and Simon, sipping drinks and reflecting on their impending mortality.

It sounds maudlin. It should be maudlin, especially considering all the alcohol they have between them. But somehow, it never goes that way.

“Honestly, I’m kind of glad,” Maia says. 

“You don’t wanna lead the New York pack into the 22nd century?” Simon asks, teasing.

“God, no. I wouldn’t want to still be doing this crap at 100, no matter how young I looked. And no one person should ever be in power that long. Besides, this job wears you out. Baby Werewolves are exhausting.”

“Hey!” Clary says. “I wasn’t that bad.”

Maia laughs. “Not that bad? You were the most exhausting Baby Werewolf I’ve ever seen."

Clary turns, silently appealing to Simon. 

“Vampire, vampire!” Simon says, waving his hands. “I don’t want to get in the middle of this.” But as soon as Clary’s back is turned, he silently mouths, _she totally was_. Maia grins, and Clary spins around to point a finger at him.

To smooth things over, Maia makes them another round of cocktails. 

“Anyway,” she says. “Immortality seems too depressing to me. I’m content with 90 or so.” She passes Clary her drink, shrugging slightly in apology. “But I guess allying with me, you never really had a shot.”

“I’m actually glad,” Clary admits, taking a sip. “Jace and Izzy are going to be okay, but if it was me?” She shakes her head. “I don’t think I’d make a very good immortal. It’s so much.”

“It is,” Simon agrees.

“What about you, Si?” Clary asks. “Are you doing okay?”

“Honestly?” Simon says. “Yeah. Think I am.”

“Talk to Izzy yet?”

He winces. “Tomorrow. We’ve both been busy, and . . . it’s kind of a hard conversation to have.”

Clary nods, while Maia’s silently grateful that she hasn’t had to have it. She’s dated a few people over the years, but none of them have been immortals, and none of them have stuck. Maybe someday, she’ll find a partner, but right now? She’s a lot happier on her own, maybe because, really, she’s never on her own. She has her pack, her friends, her family.

90-or-so years isn’t long, not compared to the centuries that others have lived. But she’s going to make them count. 

Always, always forward.

#

“Do you miss it?” Izzy asks.

She’s sitting with Simon on the training room floor, after a sparring session that was mostly just Izzy working out her frustration and trying to distract herself from the inevitable conversation, while Simon patiently waited, smiling a little, until she finally gave up. It took a while. Izzy doesn’t give up easily, never has, never will.

It’s just that words like “never” and “always” weigh so much more than they used to.

Simon shrugs. “You know, Luke asked that, too—he feels all guilty—but honestly? It never seemed real that I had it. I mean, I knew: vampire, so immortal, but that part always felt super distant. I miss my vamp speed, but immortality, that doesn’t seem like something I actually lost.”

Izzy knows the feeling. Immortality doesn’t seem real to her yet, either. She tries to picture living in the next century: what people will wear, what technology they’ll have access to, how politics will progress, what anyone will do for fun—and just can’t. She can’t imagine so much time.

But she’s excited to see it. 

She’ll lose her parents. Simon, Max, even Jace, eventually. She’ll lose Clary, and with her, part of Izzy’s own soul. The combined grief feels too large for her, too unbearable to even fathom, and yet . . . she’s excited for everything else, for experiencing all the world has to offer, for seeing what it will become. She’s awed by the idea of boundless, limitless future, of constant evolution. As a Shadowhunter, you’re prepared to die; it’s the inevitable, final duty—but Izzy doesn’t want to die; she never has.

Does that make her a bad person, she wonders? Does that joy make her selfish, when she'll leave so many people behind?

“Nah,” Simon says, nudging Izzy’s shoulder when she voices her concerns. “I think it just means you’re an optimist at heart. Immortals have to make the best of things, right? I can’t think of anyone who will make a better immortal than you.”

She beams at him, and he grins back. Eventually, though, their smiles fade because Izzy, Super Immortal, isn’t what they’re really here to discuss.

“I don’t want you to feel stuck with me,” Simon says finally.

But she doesn’t. They’ve been together off-and-on for years now. Sometimes they fight, often they drift apart, but they always find their way back to each other—and not in some tortured way, like breakup sex and tearful reunions. Not even like Magnus and Alec, who are so perfect for each other but also so intense about _everything_. Izzy’s relationship with Simon has always been simpler than that, a gentle tide that goes in and out and in again. They’re not everything to each other, but they’re always _something_.

They’ve been steadily dating for the past six months, and they know they won’t last forever—they can’t—but still, Izzy doesn’t want it to end like this. 

“I want this,” Izzy says. “I want us. But you have less time now, and I’ll understand if you want to end it here. Start again with someone else, someone you can grow old with.”

Simon thinks about it, then shakes his head. 

“Maybe someday I’ll feel that way,” he says. “Until then, I don’t really wanna live my life, like, just trying to dodge regret? I mean, that’s a losing game. I always sucked at dodgeball. You know how many times I got hit in the face by one of those overgrown, meathead—”

“Simon.”

“Right, right, the point.” He takes her hand. “If you wanna be with me? I wanna be with you, too, even if we change our minds later. Cause no one can predict the future—I don’t think? That’s not actually a thing, right? And anyway, no guy in his right mind could ever regret you, Izzy. But, but if you—”

She kisses him. He doesn’t seem to mind the interruption.

They never worried about tomorrow before. Izzy doesn’t see any reason to start now.

#

Alec feels numb at first. It’s just . . . it’s too much, all of it. He shuts down from it, for a little while, and he can tell that Magnus is being careful to give him space. Too careful. He hovers in the background, beginning hesitant sentences, only to smile and swallow the ends of them. Even when Alec presses, Magnus changes the subject, saying something light and breezy about dinner or fashion or the latest bit of Shadow World gossip. It frustrates Alec because they’ve _talked_ about this—but it’s obvious that it’s a conversation they’ll be having again and again. Maybe for centuries.

Alec can’t quite make that real yet.

He concentrates on his siblings first. Jace, who will live for centuries, too, though probably not as many as Alec. _I’ll outlive you_ , he’d told Jace, stunned, the words devoid of emotion, floating away somewhere. He’s not sure what reaction he expected, exactly, maybe a brush-off or a flippant joke, but Jace had just clapped him on the arm, said _good_ , and absolutely refused to apologize for it.

 _I’m going to lose her_ , he’d said later, voice cracking. _But I won’t lose you. I’m glad I’m going first_.

Izzy is losing Clary, too. She doesn’t know what that means yet, not really; she doesn’t know how it will actually feel. But Alec does; Alec remembers the searing pain as the second heartbeat inside his chest went silent and still. He has centuries left with Jace, too many years to even conceive of, but Izzy . . .

 _I’m so glad_ , she’d told him the other day. _I’m so glad you’re coming with me, big brother_.

Alec has to be there for her. He will be. He’ll be there for his little sister forever.

He checks in with the others: Meliorn, who’s doing well, the first Downworlder to have a spot on the Clave. Luke, who’s seemingly unruffled. Clary, Maia, and Simon, who are all supporting one another through this. It takes Alec a little longer to go see Lorenzo, but eventually he does, squaring his shoulders and apologizing for what he’s taken away. 

The alliance rune has always been fickle. It’s allowed Magnus to share his immortality with Izzy, allowed Meliorn to share his with Jace. Clary and Maia were always destined for mortal lives, and even Simon and Luke share a human lifespan now—but Alec isn’t sharing anything. Alec has stolen Lorenzo’s immortality and left nothing behind.

An apology is the very least he can do.

But Lorenzo won’t hear a word of it. He fixes Alec a cocktail—one that Alec can just barely grimace through, it’s so strong—and talks at length about the magical properties of the alliance rune, how no one can fault anyone else for what’s happened, how he wouldn’t go back and change a thing, even if he could. It’s Lorenzo, so the whole speech is more than a little condescending, not to mention peppered with casual insults about Magnus—Alec thinks it’s just comforting habit for them both, at this point—but his eyes also flick to the pictures on his wall: the giant portrait of him and Underhill, as well as a photo of everyone from the last family dinner.

“After all, Mr. Lightwood-Bane,” Lorenzo says, smiling softly. “I’ve gained so much more than I’ve lost.”

Alec leaves a short while later, unsettled and unsure of what to do. He ends up checking on the kids, not that Madzie and Max are exactly kids, these days. Teenagers, now, rushing toward adulthood. Someday, Alec and Madzie will probably look the same age.

But Max, he’ll grow older and older, until people mistake him for Alec’s grandfather. Alec will lose Jace eventually, but he’ll lose Max first.

Alec swallows and quiets the storm for now.

Max and Madzie are fine, training together at the Institute, as Catarina and Jace watch, shouting advice (Jace), encouragement (Catarina), or placing bets (both of them). Alec’s niece is there, too, watching with wide eyes. Josie, who looks just like her mother and whose brutal honesty, it turns out, is just as compulsory as her father’s. She’s bright and happy, too young to understand what it means to have both mortal and near-immortal parents. Alec will need to be there for her too, of course. Is that what being immortal means? To be a guardian forever?

How else do you love someone?

Alec watches the kids for a while, until that uncertain feeling finally settles. The storm doesn’t go away, but it changes temperature, shifts direction. He makes a portal to the loft, walks through it, and barely says hello before kissing the hell out of Magnus.

Magnus laughs, pulls back. “Hey,” he says. “What’s this all about? I mean, I’m not complaining, but . . .”

“Funny,” Alec says, smiling. “Here I was, about to ask if you wanted to take the next step.”

Magnus’s eyebrow lifts. “The sex step? I do remember accomplishing that one some time ago, although if you’re looking for a reminder . . .”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” Alec says, rolling his eyes, before his nerves get the better of him. He takes a steadying breath. “I was thinking. We could, if you wanted . . . now that things have settled down some, as much as they do, anyway--I was thinking we could take our next step. As a family.”

Magnus’s eyes widen.

Alec swallows. “It doesn’t have to be right now,” he says, even though he wants it to be right now, desperately, wants to read their child bedtime stories, and teach them how to shoot an arrow, and scold his husband for spoiling them with magically sprinkled ice cream. “It’s okay if you’re not ready. We have time.” He huffs a laugh. “All the time in the world, apparently—”

“I’m sorry,” Magnus says hesitantly. “I know this isn’t what you wanted—”

“You don’t know,” Alec interrupts. “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted this.”

That’s the part he hasn’t let himself acknowledge, the sliver of guilt he’s been holding onto. Immortality is surreal, terrifying, impossible. There’s a grief in him now that wasn’t there before, a grief that’s just waiting to be turned loose . . . but there’s also relief, gratitude, wonder, joy. Magnus won’t move on. Magnus won’t be alone. Alec will with move _with_ him, together, forever. It’s the only part of forever that doesn’t completely overwhelm him, and he wants it with everything that he has.

But maybe Magnus . . .

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Magnus says, before Alec can voice this sudden doubt. “Of course, I want this, of course . . .”

Magnus's hands are shaking

Alec frowns. “Hey. What’s—”

Magnus pulls away, smiling a little. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he says. “Overcaffeinated, I expect.” 

And that’s just—Alec could strangle him sometimes, because overcaffeinated? Really? Is it so hard to tell the truth just once? 

"Darling," Magnus continues lightly. "Don't fret. "I'm fine."

And while Alec will deny it to his dying day--well. Izzy insists that Alec has an impeccable “salty bitch face” and it’s possible that this is the face he’s wearing now as he stares at Magnus.

Magnus winces. “I have told better lies,” he says, after a moment.

“You have,” Alec says, “but I’d rather you just stopped telling them at all.”

Magnus glances at him, then sighs and walks over to the drink cart. Alec opens his mouth, then closes it. If this is what Magnus needs to talk--but Magnus freezes, one hand on the unopened bottle of scotch.

“I never thought I’d get to have this,” he says.

“Magnus . . . ”

Magnus turns, worrying at his rings. His smile is embarrassed, eyes gold and wet. “I didn’t want to tell you,” he says, “because there’s nothing actually wrong, Alexander. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, than I ever believed I could be. Everything I’ve wanted, it's all—but this is so new for you, so much to process at once. You needed space to accept it, to grieve for what, for who, you'll lose. I didn’t want to crowd you. I’m, I can be so—”

“Hey,” Alec says, stepping forward. “You’re never too much for me. I’ve told you that.”

Magnus nods, but drops his eyes. His hands, Alec notes, are shaking slightly again. “I never thought I’d get to have this,” he repeats. “I always have to say goodbye, but you, I’ll never—I'll never have to--you can’t know—" 

And then Magnus begins to cry.

Alec is across the room immediately. “I’ve got you,” he says, holding Magnus close. “It’s okay. You’ll never have to say it.”

It takes a while for Magnus to calm down. They end up on the couch, Magnus curled into his chest. “Well,” he says eventually, voice a little rough. “I’m sorry, Alexander. I can’t even blame the liquor this time.”

Alec smooths back Magnus’s hair; there are blue streaks in it today to match his eyeliner. “You never have to be sorry with me."

“I know. Only I interrupted what you were saying before. Something lovely about next steps and new beginnings.”

Alec meets his eyes. “It’s okay if you’re not ready. We have time.”

Magnus smiles at him, sincere and bright and beautiful.

“We do,” he says. “But that’s no reason to waste it.” 

#

Maryse leans in the kitchen archway, facing the dining room full of guests. Luke finishes stirring the pozole and comes to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“Do you regret it?” she asks softly. “That you didn’t become immortal.”

Luke’s hair is starting to go gray, especially in his beard. Maryse is dealing with arthritis in her wrists. They’re both active and healthy and hopefully have decades ahead of them, but they won’t be here forever. Time will move on without them eventually.

He follows her gaze out into the dining room. Alec is carefully helping little Josie hold her new baby cousin, Beatrice, while Clary discreetly takes a picture on her phone and Magnus tries not to so obviously melt into a pool of incandescently happy warlock goo. Max and Madzie are clearly texting one another, even though they’re all of five feet apart; Luke assumes they’re complaining about all the sappy adults in the room. Meliorn, meanwhile, is laughing gently at Jace, who’s losing an argument with Simon and Izzy: apparently, he promised to watch some sci-fi movie as part of a bet and is now trying to renegotiate the deal. Lorenzo is rhapsodically praising the empanadas Raphael brought, while Raphael fights his twitching smile. Catarina and Underhill are comparing cocktails, while Maia interrogates them about her proposed restaurant menu, which is set to open in three weeks. _You’re all going to be there opening night_ , she’d threatened everyone, unnecessarily. _Or I will scratch the shit out of you_.

“No,” Luke says honestly. “Wouldn’t want to outlive the kids.”

Maryse nods fervently, but her voice is deliberately light. “You don’t want to see the future? Vampire Shadowhunter in space?”

He snorts. That definitely sounds like one of Simon’s movies. “Honestly? I think I’d rather just help build the future. It’s for them, not for us, and that’s okay.”

She relaxes back into him, smiling. “You’re a wise man, Lucian.”

“I know,” he says, grinning, and she laughs.

“Come on, then, old man,” Maryse says, and he takes her hand as they rejoin the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s it! Thank you to everyone who’s commented along the way; it’s meant a lot to me, and I really hope you enjoyed how it all turned out. Any kudos or thoughts are, as always, deeply appreciated.


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